Public Spaces in the Philippines

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Ateneo de Manila University Archīum Ateneo

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10-2019

Making Sense of the City: Public Spaces in the Philippines

Remmon E. Barbaza

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Part of the Philosophy Commons Making Sense of the City Making Sense of the City

REMMON E. BARBAZA Editor

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© 2019 by Ateneo de Manila University and Remmon E. Barbaza Copyright for each essay remains with the individual authors. Preface vii Cover design by Jan-Daniel S. Belmonte Remmon E. Barbaza Cover photograph by Remmon E. Barbaza Book design by Paolo Tiausas Great Transformations 1 The Political Economy of City-Building Megaprojects All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, in the Manila Peri-urban Periphery stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or Jerik Cruz otherwise, without the written permission of the Publisher. Struggling for Public Spaces 41 The Political Significance of Manila’s The National Library of the Philippines CIP Data Segregated Urban Landscape Recommended entry: Lukas Kaelin

Making sense of the city : public spaces in the Philippines / Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers 69 Remmon E. Barbaza, editor. -- Quezon City : Ateneo de Manila University Press, [2019], c2019. Fernando N. Zialcita pages ; cm Cleaning the Capital 95 ISBN 978-971-550-911-4 The Campaign against Cabarets and Cockpits in the Prewar Greater Manila Area 1. Urbanization -- Philippines -- Metro Manila. 2. Cities and Michael D. Pante towns -- Growth -- Philippines -- Metro Manila. 3. City planning -- Philippines -- Metro Manila. 4. Sociology, Urban -- Philippines -- Eudaimonia in the Margins 121 Metro Manila. 5. Philippine essays (English) I. Barbaza, Remmon E. 307.764 HT384.P5 P920190071 Negotiating Ways to Flourish in Urban Slum Dwellings Marc Oliver D. Pasco REMMON E. BARBAZA

Preface Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila 145 Gary C. Devilles

Sex(edness) in the City 181 Reimagining Our Urban Spaces with Abraham Akkerman Duane Allyson U. Gravador-Pancho

The City and the Dynamism of Invention IN 2015, SOME OF THE MEMBERS of the Department of and Exploitation 193 Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University initiated several Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez round-table discussions on the city, later inviting colleagues from other departments, such as English, Filipino, History, Sociology The City as Illusion and Promise 213 and Anthropology, and Economics to join the conversations. The Remmon E. Barbaza discussions were enlightening, and became an opportunity for us to challenge our own understanding of the city, widening our About the Authors 227 perspectives and allowing us to expand the scope of our inquiries even as each of us remained within our own disciplinal assump- Index 230 tions and trajectories. The collection of essays in this book is the result of these exchanges. While the range of questions and research methods varied significantly, from the more concrete and empirical, to the more abstract and speculative, one senses that the essays do have shared concerns, and that they all struggle to make sense of the same phenomenon—namely, the city, and Metro Manila in particular. From the nine essays in this anthology, three themes eventually emerged, thus forming the sections of this book. In Part I: Contesting Spaces, our first three essays discuss the ways by which the city becomes the site of struggle for the allocation and ordering of spaces. In “Great Transformations: The Spatial Politics of City- building Megaprojects in the Manila Peri-urban Periphery,” Jerik Cruz examines “transformations in the geographies of governance

vii viii Preface REMMON E. BARBAZA ix that have been catalyzed by . . . mega-projects,” showing how such Here the abstract universal, that is the city, becomes embodied undertakings bring about the “formation of new constellations space. The plaza can be the spine that keeps the city together as it of power, territory and governance processes, creating a special moves forward.” window for probing the dynamics of urban spatial production within In Part II: Sensing Through the Margins, our next three essays developing countries like the Philippines.” How such new constella- explore the city from below and from the fringes. In “Cleaning tions develop further, especially in relation to political power, “will the Capital: The Campaign against Cabarets and Cockpits in the prove to be of historic importance not just to the maneuverings of Prewar Greater Manila Area,” Michael D. Pante examines the state and capital in neoliberalized contexts, but to the prospects “complexity of urban border areas and fringe belts in capital cities,” of still-struggling, still-evolving movements of non-elite forces to focusing on the “simultaneous porosity and rigidity of the borders” claim universal and democratic rights to the city.” of Manila and Quezon City with respect to two popular entertain- Having lived in Quezon City for a couple of years while teaching ment activities that were often seen and indeed, continue to be philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University, Lukas Kaelin (now seen as belonging to the fringes of the city, namely, cabarets and with the Catholic Private University Linz in Austria) had concrete, cockfighting. As Pante hopes to show, shifting the study from the personal experience as a basis for his reflections in “Struggling for center to the fringes of the city allows us to “substantially unpack Public Spaces: The Political Significance of Manila’s Segregated the socio-spatial complexity of vices in the greater Manila area.” Urban Landscape.” Kaelin is concerned with “the political signif- Aristotle is known to have found the ultimate end of all our icance of the urban landscape of Manila,” inquiring into “how actions, inquiries, and technical preoccupations, namely, eudai- the notion of the ‘public’ plays out with respect to the polarity of monia (usually translated as “happiness” or “well-being). Unlike, private and public.” For Kaelin, there is no doubt that the frag- however, his former teacher and friend, Plato, Aristotle did not mentation fundamentally underlying the megacity that is Metro dwell on some eternal and unchanging idea or form, such as in Manila can only be overcome through the people’s willful creation the case of happiness, but rather sought to understand it within of public spaces, and in so doing also resist dictatorial and corrupt the context of the practical realities of human existence. Thus, governments. Aristotle could not avoid the question whether there are certain Guided by Hegelian dialectics, Fernando N. Zialcita concludes material conditions that are necessary for us to achieve happi- the first part with a consideration of the plaza as the historic ness. Marc Oliver D. Pasco brings this problem to bear in his core of towns and cities, serving as spaces that shape “municipal essay, “Eudaimonia in the Margins: Negotiating Ways to Flourish identity.” In “Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers,” Zialcita decries in Urban Slum Dwellings.” Pasco asks, “Is it possible for people the loss of this central and fundamental function of the plaza: “It who are economically and socially marginalized to attain happi- is here that local history, social solidarity, unique customs and ness?” Refusing to offer any easy answer, Pasco instead decides to expressions of creativity come together to form a sense of place.” engage the Aristotelian question by employing Pierre Bourdieu’s One can easily see indeed that in most, if not all, towns and cities concept of habitus in examining concrete possibilities of well-being in the Philippines, the building of shopping malls near, if not in among the urban poor. Pasco concludes that “Happiness, from the place of, the historic plazas is viewed as an indication of progress, perspective of the habitus, is not an explicit goal which calls for the rather than as a threat to the local people’s history and identity. conscious application of practical wisdom in various situations. It True to his Hegelian roots, Zialcita does not see the problem as an is the function of an agent’s excellence in improvising strategies either-or situation, for “the plaza complex can combine together that cohere with objective necessity. Viewed in this manner, it history and business, creativity and livelihood. It becomes a sacred can therefore be said that, indeed, the poor can be happy. Just not space that concretizes the various things that make a city unique. always in the way we would imagine or wish them to be.” x Preface REMMON E. BARBAZA xi

In “Sensing and Seeing Manila,” Gary C. Devilles reflects, invention on the one hand and exploitation on the other, Agustin through the sense of seeing, “the politics of Manila’s representa- Martin G. Rodriguez, in his essay “The City and the Dynamism of tion and depiction, the asymmetrical relations of its people, and Invention and Exploitation,” seeks to find a way out of the imbal- the creative strategies employed by people under an oppressive ance, as the dominant rationality entrenches itself in a system surveillance culture.” Devilles undertakes such reflection using that marginalizes other rationalities. Rodriguez is convinced that two Filipino indie films (Serbis and Tribu), and a novel (Edgardo “it is truly incumbent upon the margins, to the others who are M. Reyes’s Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag), which was later turned into a not completely of this web of global urbanity, to break open the Lino Brocka movie (Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag). For Devilles, logic of the urban for it to accept the possibilities of other ways of seeing Manila means “understanding contradictions and problem- dw e l li n g .” atic relations and . . . in that partial light, in the interplay between Finally, in “The City as Illusion and Promise,” I examine the absence and presence, between what is revealed and concealed, claim (by Henri Lefebvre, and later David Harvey) that the city seeing is an aesthetic, ethical project and ultimately the site of no longer exists, at least as we know it. What we have instead is struggle.” merely an illusion, something that Martin Heidegger also implies In the concluding Part III: Imagining Possibilities, our final in some of his later writings, notably his seminal work on the three essays look beyond the current state of the city and dare essence of technology. In confronting such an extreme proposition, to imagine how it could further unfold or transform itself in the I first raise a conceptual problem: is the city a city insofar as it is future. In “Sex(edness) in the City: Reimagining Our Urban Spaces not a province? And vice versa? But the conceptual problematic with Abraham Akkerman,” Duane Allyson U. Gravador-Pancho of course is also manifested in actual material conditions. Can the foregrounds the gendered origins of the cities that we build. Taking city exist without the province? What is the relationship between her cue from Akkerman, Gravador-Pancho outlines the predom- the city and province? While I find merit in recognizing the illusion inantly masculine characteristics of most cities, which coincides that is the city, he nonetheless invites the reader to imagine other with the privileging of Western rationality that emphasizes rigidity possibilities, however impossible they may seem: “Either we settle and predictability in urban design. Such a predominantly mascu- with the illusion that is the city of our age, or reimagine and work line conception and design of the city comes at the cost of setting towards the realization of new possibilities for the city, one that aside characteristics that are feminine, such as the elements of restores and respects the balance in nature that we have for so surprise and eroticism. But how would a city look like if we allowed long forgotten and covered over with our illusions.” the feminine to also come into play? “In the context of urban With this anthology, we authors hope to open further the planning and city-building,” Gravador-Pancho claims, “the task is discussions on the city within the Philippine context. With Metro to reimagine spaces so as to make space for our bodiliness and Manila bursting at the seams, as tensions continue to intensify and eroticism, for our capacities to truly desire and love one another. more intractable problems arise than those that are being solved, The first aspect of this task consists in constructing spaces that it becomes a matter of survival for all the stakeholders to come acknowledge and encourage the use of our bodies for mobility, together and shape the future of the city. for reaching out. This would perhaps mean giving more space for I wish to acknowledge the Brigittine Monks of the Priory of walking, for sitting, for simply experiencing the city as a vulnerable Our Lady of Consolation in Amity, Oregon, where I spent close to human being among other vulnerable human beings, without the forty days and forty nights of peace and quiet in November and pretense to security that a car or any similar gadget provides.” December 2017, allowing me to work on pending projects, including Proceeding from the fundamental idea that “the city is at play,” this book. Brother Prior Bernard Ner Suguitan, Brothers Steven but a play that happens in the tension between innovation and and Matthew, and the rest of the community were boundless in xii Preface

JERIK CRUZ their generosity and hospitality, not only allowing me to join their communal prayer and liturgical celebrations, but even letting me try my hand at making some of their famous gourmet confec- tionery. I thank as well my brother Paul Rhoniel, his wife Joy, and children Hannah and Renzo, who not only drove me all the way Great Transformations from Ridgefield, Washington to the monastery, but also gave me The Political Economy boxes of pencils, yellow writing pads, and nutrition supplies to help sustain me during the writing retreat. of City-Building Megaprojects in the Manila Peri-urban Periphery1

FAR BEYOND THE SUBURBS of Metropolitan Manila, nestled in the rolling plains of the Central Luzon basin, the construction of the roadworks of the Alviera and Clark Green City (CGC) projects are now in full swing. Still surrounded by swathes of agricultural land and years away yet from completing their first phases of development, both mega-projects have already been heralded as the most promising ventures of their kind within the Philippines today. Despite being in their infancy, in fact, both Alviera and CGC have been seen to form the very “next frontiers” of Philippine urbanism (Manila Standard 2014), introducing all at once the future growth hubs of the Central Luzon region, the nation’s very first “aerotropolis” (Amojelar 2013), and new forms of sustainable urban development in the Philippines. But these two mega-projects are only an inkling of historic changes that await the Manila peri-urban fringe, if plans to decongest the country’s National Capital Region (NCR) materialize. Owing to worsening dysfunctions in Manila mega-city life, the Philippine government adopted last September 2014 a “Mega Manila Dream Plan” for boosting growth clusters and transport networks in the surrounding peri-urban fringe (Japan International Cooperation Agency 2014). Meanwhile, a groundswell in large-scale, mixed-use townships by leading private developers has taken root in provinces north and south of NCR (Pacis 2014). Trammeled amidst these trends, land on the Manila mega-urban region has come to

1 2 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 3 fore as a frontier zone for market-oriented mega-project develop- established and maintained, and of what prospects exist for real- ment, yet also a spatial platform for the creation of “next gener- izing universal and democratic rights to the city. ation” built landscapes that are proliferating across East Asia (Webster 2014, 321–23). Megaprojects and the Scalar Politics This chapter investigates transformations in the geographies of Neoliberal Urbanism of governance that have been catalyzed by these mega-projects. Since the late 1980s, cities across developing Asia have witnessed Based on mixed-method research of the Alviera and CGC projects, an upsurge in efforts by market-based property firms and state I unravel how the realization of such ventures has gone hand-in- bodies to restructure urban landscapes by means of large-scale, hand with the formation of new constellations of power, territory integrated “mega-projects” (Shatkin 2011, 80). Normally presented and governance processes, creating a special window for probing as a measure for shoring up “world class” economic opportunities, the dynamics of urban spatial production within developing coun- and operationalized as parcelized interventions, these large-scale tries like the Philippines. However, if partly due to the very features ventures have, from the 2000s onwards, taken the form of mixed-use of these mega-projects—their non-routine nature, the sheer scale developments addressing objectives ranging from commercial of costs and risks that they impose, and their disruptive tenden- to social and environmental goals (Strauch, Takano, and Hordijk cies (Altschuler and Luberoff 2003, 4, 267)—these governance 2015, 178). Globalizing middle- and upper- classes, keen to flee the transformations have also resulted from scale-related challenges inconveniences of degraded urban arteries, have often been drawn that have been faced by their proponents. Thus, I argue that a full to purveyed images of plush living and “progress” (Michel 2010, understanding of these mega-projects’ development efforts must 388–89), yet the emergence of such megaprojects has not always grapple with the state rescaling processes and the scale-manipu- been seen in a favorable light. Numerous observers, for one, have lating strategies that market- and state-based actors have deployed noted that such ventures have often run counter to social concerns, in their bids to secure control over land and the production of new particularly by intensifying socio-spatial divisions through gentrifi- urban space. cation-driven displacement and the eviction of peripheral popula- Yet these mega-project processes have not occurred in an tions (Strauch, Takano, and Hordijk 2015, 177–78). open, free-form milieu: rather, they have been situated within the Yet these megaprojects have been only one means by which Philippines’ prevailing strains of market-oriented urban govern- neoliberal urban governance has found expression in the cities of ance. While the neoliberal restructuring of the Philippine political the Global South. Defined as an order of market-disciplinary socio- economy since the 1980s has resulted in deep-seated developmental economic regulation in which urban spaces have been transformed doldrums, it has also precipitated a long-term “creative destruc- into strategic arenas for capital accumulation and market-oriented tion” of the practices, mechanisms, and institutions governing growth, neoliberal urbanism has entailed the remaking of cities as space and urban development (Bello et al. 2014, 9–10, 55). Nowhere platforms for entrepreneurial forms of governance and unprece- has this recalibration been more arresting than in the now-prolif- dented degrees of private sector involvement, if not control, over erating mega-projects of the Manila mega-urban fringe, where urban development trajectories (Peck, Theodore, and Brenner sclerotic governance regimes over the “losers” and “winners” of the 2009, 57–58, 63). Yet, if widely associated with the marketization Philippines’ “new” economy have been cast into stark relief with one of housing and social services, the repurposing of urban admin- another. All told, the significance of these mega-projects extends far istrative apparatuses toward attracting business investment, and beyond themselves: they tell an even broader story of how power the proliferation of privatized enclaves, neoliberal urban govern- relations are now exercised over the Philippines’ economy of space, ance regimes have just as significantly entailed the reshuffling of how governing regimes over new “world-class” urban spaces are of the territorial scales of state power (59–62). In tandem with 4 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 5 efforts to recast cities along lines of market-based growth, state relative socio-spatial power positions of different actors, and how structures that had previously been centralized, nationally stand- institutional “command lines” of authority are drawn over territo- ardized, and oriented to welfarist or developmentalist objectives ries (Swyngedouw 2000, 70–71), scale can even be said to consti- have been subjected to various grades of decentralization, place- tute a socially-mediated apparatus of power—congealing and based customization, and the enshrining of global competitiveness extending relations of power and control among variegated social as the principal aim of policy intervention (Klink and Denaldi 2012, forces. Within such understandings of scalar politics, all socio- 547–48). political practices and processes are instead viewed as having At the heart of all these processes lies a historic shift in which indelible scalar dimensions, so that manipulating and leveraging neoliberal urbanism and privately-driven megaprojects have these scalar features can have vital repercussions on the realiza- brought to fore new geographies of governance. As analysts have tion of the agendas of different agents, movements and organiza- observed, implementers of contemporary urban megaprojects tions (MacKinnon 2010, 29–30, 32–33). have commonly been granted “exceptionalist” measures exempting In the parlance of Smith (1993; 2004), for example, actors that them from the authority of conventional state bodies and regula- are socially and politically handicapped at a given scale can seek tions, while endowing them with special powers of intervention, to jump into different scalar settings where political opportunities decision-making, and policy-formulation (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and the balance-of-power may be more favorable for their activities. and Rodriguez 2002, 543; Kennedy et al. 2014, 13, 37). Justified in Likewise, other agents can seek to bend the existing scalar features of terms of commercial and technocratic prerogatives, unaccount- given social activities, disentangling the links between certain prac- able and exclusionary management regimes surrounding the tices at given scalar frames, so as to suit the fulfillment of their inter- governance of these ventures have increasingly prevailed, whether ests. Through such multi-pronged scalar strategies, different agents in the form of public-private partnerships (PPPs) between corpo- in different spatial-institutional contexts are able to produce new rate firms and state organizations; autonomous and quasi-private gestalts of scale in the course of mega-project development, in order parastatal agencies; closed-door networks of bureaucrats, business to temporarily crystallize certain geometries of power and govern- elites, professional consultancies, and technical experts; or token ance (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002, 542; MacKinnon public participation exercises in which citizens are denied real insti- 2010, 31). In fact, as will be shown later, the deployment of such tutional power to affect decisions concerning the governance of strategies has been an indispensable feature of urban mega-project entire cities (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002, 565–66). implementation, not only to better advance the strategic agendas of All in all, such exceptionalist mechanisms have further undermined private and public sector developers, but also as a means of coping already-sharp democratic deficits in urban governance. with incoherencies brought about by the Philippines’ long transition Equally noteworthy, the existence of such governance dynamics to a regime of neoliberal urban governance. attests to how questions of scale are cardinal concerns for the development of urban mega-projects. Though typically understood Tropic of Neoliberalism: Neoliberal Urbanism and as the focal setting at which spatial boundaries are defined for Megaproject Making in the Peri-Urban Philippines specific social processes (Agnew 1997, 100), subsequent recogni- The strategic manipulation of scalar frames, especially in relation in human geography that scalar boundaries are socially-con- tion to state institutional structures and the consolidation of neolib- structed, relational, and fluid yet objectively-inherited phenomena eral governance regimes, have been manifested to an exceptional has drawn attention to how the framing of scalar realities can degree in the Philippines since the 1980s. If couched at the time in themselves be factors in how socio-political processes play out the discourse of democratization following the Marcos dictator- (Born and Purcell 2006, 197–99). Through their role in shaping the ship, this rescaling process entailed the passage of the country’s 6 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 7

Local Government Code in 1991, which decentralized an entire over nominally public urban spaces and develop them into private- continuum of governance functions, including in urban planning, ly-run enclaves (Murphy and Hogan 2012, 23, 25). Unsurprisingly, land-use management, and the power to enter into joint ventures the country’s urban form has displayed ever-higher degrees of and PPP’s, down from the national toward subnational levels (Porio socio-spatial fragmentation between high-performing, globally-con- 2012, 11–13). Within the National Capital Region, this downscaling nected nodes of the urban economy, and more publicly-neglected resulted in the dismantling of the cronyism-ridden Metro Manila segments of Philippine cities, epitomized by the 500 major slum Commission into a weaker Metro Manila Development Authority, communities of Metro Manila (Ragrario 2003). For the most part, limited to coordinating the urban governance functions of its a “bypass-implant” character of developer-driven projects such as constituent local government units (LGUs) (Michel 2010, 390–91).2 gated enclaves, privatized business districts, and privately-operated Even more striking has been the rise of new “exceptional” bodies interconnecting infrastructures has obtained—with commercial oriented towards attracting investment and typified by market- developments tending to “bypass” all zones of unwanted urban friendly modes of regulation. In 1995, the Philippine government “excess,” while “implanting” new spaces for globally-connected legislated the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act, making the country consumption and accumulation (Shatkin 2008, 384, 388). the first in the world to allow the creation of privately-administered These same trends have also been increasingly displayed in SEZs as separate customs and investment-friendly territories (McKay the peri-urbanization dynamics of the Manila Mega-Urban Region 2006, 210–11). Autonomous Freeports have likewise been created (MUR)—a roughly 12,000 km2 conurbation consisting of NCR and by legislation over lands spanning tens of thousands of hectares parts of six surrounding provinces, which has been estimated to across the country, with unprecedented powers of eminent domain, be the fourth most populous urban region in the world in 2015 developing and regulating utilities, public services, and infrastruc- (Demographia 2015, 20). Home to some of the foremost farming ture, and planning as well as managing allocated territories (Bello regions of the Philippines, large expanses of the MUR have already et al. 2014, 94). No less important, through the Bases Conversion been buffeted by waves of land-use change since the early 1980s, Act of 1992, former military bases were placed under the sole juris- usually through the mushrooming of SEZ’s, leisure estates, but most diction of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA), especially, private residential enclaves (Kelly 1998, 35–39). More with powers, among others, of selling and leasing such lands to the recently, the longest ongoing real estate boom in the Philippines’ private sector; overseeing urban planning and management within post-dictatorship history has tilted peri-urbanization trends in them, and constructing, owning, leasing, operating, and maintaining the MUR toward mega-project development, with advances in the public utilities and infrastructure facilities (Ordoñez 2015, 36, 42–43). scale, sophistication, master-planning and financing capabilities In the highly class-stratified Philippine context, systematic of property developers lending more and more prominence to neoliberalization has served to even further entrench the country’s the establishment of large-scale, mixed-use ventures on the urban privately-oriented and geographically-uneven dynamics of prop- fringe (Webster 2014, 323). Beginning with the 2007 unveiling of erty development (Michel 2010, 386). While state units have failed Ayala Land Inc.’s 1,600-hectare Nuvali township in Canlubang, to respond effectively to the country’s intractable urban woes, Laguna, the mixed-use township trend has continued to garner private conglomerates have secured unrivalled heights of control momentum, with observers declaring 2015 as “the year of town- over urban planning and administration processes (Shatkin 2008, ships” on account of at least 11 such ventures being developed 398). Labelled by observers as evincing a pattern of neo-patrimo- across the country (Lamudi 2015). nial trends in urban governance, the demonstrated weakness of Yet despite buoyant expectations, institutional impediments the Philippine state in performing urban governance functions has have still threatened the realization of such townships. As noted enabled an oligarchy of family-linked companies to seize control in studies of urban mega-projects across Asia, the most common 8 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 9 causes for the failure of these ventures has been in consolidating post-war Philippine history. To begin with, the firm was chiefly large-scale tracts of urban land, protracted local resistance against responsible for developing its former Hacienda Makati throughout project implementation, and oftentimes the unreliability and the 1950s into the Philippines’ leading central business, diplomatic, ineffectiveness of local governments (Shatkin 2011, 86–89). On and financial nerve center, setting a gold standard for Philippine one hand, even while incentivizing entrepreneurial governance property developers for years to come (Michel 2010, 389). approaches, local governance quality amidst decentralization has remained uneven, and improvements in lagging LGU’s have been sluggish (Capuno 2005, 28). On the other, the makeup of Philippine urban and peri-urban land markets have also posed persistent challenges to large-scale land acquisition and conversion processes. With a fragmented, inefficient, unreliable, and corruption-prone land administration system stretching across nineteen different state agencies, such markets have proven a fertile ground for conflict, with the same plot of land often harboring competing claims on the basis of different property regimes (Chikiamko and Fabella 2011, 133). Confronted with these hurdles, mega-project proponents have usually found it necessary to “strategically localize” their development activities by meeting the needs of and simultaneously Fig.1. Entrance of Alviera as of February 2016 influencing political, institutional, and social conditions particu- Source: Author larly at the local level (Coe and Lee 2006, 63–64). Far from simply “place-shopping” among pre-constructed sites, developers have systematically intervened across multiple scalar terrains not only in order to establish their leverage within local institutional processes and relations, but also to proactively reconstitute such conditions (McKay 2006, 8–9). How then have these above-mentioned challenges affected the Alviera and CGC projects, and how have local governance processes over land resources and urban space been transformed amidst project proponents’ efforts in order to surmount these constraints? We now turn to addressing these questions.

Ayala Land’s Alviera: In the Shadows of “Acting Government” By acclamation the Philippines’ premier real estate developer, and a subsidiary of one of the country’s oldest family-owned conglomerates, Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) can lay claim to being a Fig.2. Ongoing Construction of Alviera as of February 2016 consistent pioneer of urban development trends throughout Source: Author 10 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 11

Since then, ALI has replicated such feats in now-iconic projects, commercial hubs to Metro Manila (iMoney.ph 2015). Yet in reality, the most recent being its 1,600-hectare Nuvali township in 2007 in the venture’s operations on the ground have been far more compli- Laguna province (Ayala Land 2015, 25–27). cated. For one, the capacity of the Porac local state remains anemic Hailed by pundits to be Ayala Land’s most ambitious initiative across practically all business-relevant areas: as of April 2014, Porac since Nuvali, the 1,180-hectare Alviera project in Porac, Pampanga was ranked 826th out of 978 municipalities in the country’s Cities is a mixed-use, master-planned township that is envisioned to and Municipalities Competitiveness Index, suffering particularly in eventually serve as the growth center of the whole of the Central the categories of economic dynamism (940th) and infrastructure Luzon region (Dumlao 2014). To be developed over a twenty-five- (853rd), but still also performing far below median levels for govern- to thirty-year period, the first phase of the project, from 2016 to ment efficiency (667th)4 (National Competitiveness Council 2014). 2019, will involve the establishment of three residential commu- But even more serious has been Alviera’s enmeshment with local nities, two educational institutions, a high-end country club, land disputes—especially in relation to the 761.1-hectare lot that and a 31-hectare industrial park (Montealegre 2014). With the ALI’s JV partner, LLHI, claims to have acquired by a 2003 Deed of Subic-Clark-Tarlac expressway (SCTEX) passing right through its Sale. This purchase, however, has been censured by residents and property, and being strategically located close to the refurbished critics as a case of dispossession, having involved lands inhabited Clark International Airport, the mega-project has been projected and tilled by 1,500 residents from local farming communities. In to become a central district of a looming “aerotropolis” in CL fact, certifications from the Barangay Council of Hacienda Dolores (Philippine Daily Inquirer 2014). Likewise, Alviera is to be distin- attest to many of these families’ first settlement within the area as guished as a new “green township,” by preserving the project site’s far back as 1835 (Jimenez-David 2014). Despite this, the resulting mountainous environment for ecotourism purposes while incor- land dispute has witnessed LLHI security forces and unidentified porating eco-friendly urban landscapes (Vibar 2014). figures committing systematic human rights violations since 2011 This focus on Alviera’s development as an urban and nature against residents, including evictions, demolitions, crop destruc- hub highlights Alviera’s being constructed in the town of Porac,3 tion, intimidation, assaults, and extrajudicial killings (Hernandez specifically within the barangays of Hacienda Dolores and Sapang 2014). Uwak, where communities of lowland farmers and Aeta indige- Meanwhile, though the 1,180-hectare lot of ALI (which the nous peoples (IPs) reside. In these areas, the project will consol- company purchased from the once nationally-influential Puyat idate separate property contributions of 1,180-hectares from ALI family and their Manila Bank group in 2012) has been repeatedly and 761.1-hectares from Leonio Land Holdings Inc. (LLHI), which emphasized not to suffer from land problems, critics maintain that had acquired property in the town even earlier (Ayala Land 2015). the ongoing construction of Alviera has actually entailed an illegal Both companies have formed a JV company for the project called conversion process, having been missing a formal conversion Nuevocentro Inc., in which a 55 percent (ALI) /45 percent (LLHI) order from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) (Carranza profit-sharing scheme has been arranged (Magturo 2014; PEZA 2016). Likewise, rural justice advocates from Pampanga contend 2014). that the project’s development has flouted a 1990’s application of Hacienda Dolores residents to have the same land plot covered by Thwarting the Ayala Model in Porac? the government land reform program. In the recollection of such From a project standpoint, the reported performance of Alviera advocates, the entire estate was originally intended by DAR to be has exceeded expectations: on the merit of the project’s ambition developed into a model agrarian reform community, though efforts and initial success to date, Porac has been heralded as one of to this end were stymied by the resistance of the Puyats’ property the leading “next-wave cities” providing alternative business and managers and the long-term impacts of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption 12 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 13

(Enriquez 2016). Hence, while no legal proceedings are presently Secondly, ALI and LLHI have been able to exercise considerable hounding ALI’s property, dormant legal risks have remained. influence over the crafting of the municipality’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). Starting in 2005 with LLHI and 2012 with The Scalar Politics of Intervention: ALI, both companies have prompted major post-hoc adjustments in From Coalitions to Land Acquisition plans to accommodate the mega-project, by contributing substan- Amidst such impediments, ALI has had to undertake unprec- tial inputs and expertise to municipal planners (Lansangan 2016). edented measures to craft more favorable conditions for Alviera’s One critical outcome of this has been the explicit recognition that development. This has evidently been the case in the firm’s coali- the CLUP has given to the Alviera project as Porac’s “new economic tion-building efforts, which have reportedly garnered the support center” (Municipality of Porac 2016, 42). As can be observed from of key power-brokers within Pampanga province, such as the fig. 4.3, the prominence of Alviera—located at the center of munic- governor of Pampanga, the present congresswoman of the second ipality’s land terrain and adjacent to various proposed road inter- District of Pampanga (former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo), changes—corroborates its privileged status in the town’s planned former Senator Lito Lapid (a resident of Porac), and the Pampanga land-use regime. Since CLUP adjustments are required for the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (comprised by the province’s passage of new zoning ordinances, these new features of Porac’s business elite), who have each contributed to the mega-project’s land-use plan effectively produce a quasi-legal instrument for development (see fig. 4.2) (Mapiles 2015; Ayala manager 2016). facilitating local land conversion and fostering a broader growth- Former president Arroyo especially has been recounted by project driven agenda. stakeholders to be a vital mediator of talks between LGU officials, ALI and prospective investors—and was even, in the recollection of Porac’s mayor, the key agent who facilitated ALI’s entry into Porac starting in 2010 (dela Cruz 2016). But the extensiveness of ALI’s engagements goes far beyond the extension of a multi-level project coalition. On one hand, with communities in peri-urban settings reportedly being prone to “insular” outlooks, the Alviera project has witnessed attempts by ALI to cultivate supportive relational webs with the LGU and local communities, with ALI’s managers on the ground often having to comport themselves in a fashion reminiscent of Philippine landed elites of yore through gestures such as donating to local festivals, attending weddings, sponsoring dinners and local functions, as well as becoming godparents to children of key residents (Ayala executive 2016). Apparently, the ability of ALI personnel to conduct themselves in this quasi-patron manner, and to derive tactical advantage from it, has been a prized asset in Ayala’s Strategic Landbank Management Group. The said group has even reportedly Fig.3. Porac Map with proposed Alviera project in the revised CLUP stopped hiring business school graduates from Ivy League univer- Source: Municipality of Porac (2016) sities on the basis of their lacking the necessary flexibility for such activities (Alviera manager 2016). 14 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 15

Just as riveting has been the CLUP’s proposed development the property were non-agricultural, untenanted, poorly suited trajectory, which has buttressed ALI’s commanding position in to cultivated crops, and also features an excessive slope of 18 the town’s local economy. This is most apparent in the revised degrees (Hernandez 2014, 1–3). Central to procuring the order CLUP’s endorsement of a public and private partnership model for was a compromise agreement LLHI had cobbled with the officers undertaking eco-tourism projects—an area which the plan repeat- of a local irrigators association, Aguman, which consisted of local edly identifies as the emerging industry within the municipality farmers who had been forced to settle in the LLHI-claimed lands (Municipality of Porac 2016, 26, 34, 38). Though not mentioned due to post-eruption lahar flows in the 1990s. Entailing the cessa- explicitly in the document, this proposed policy focus promises tion of efforts for land reform coverage in exchange for a 30-hectare to secure significant potential returns for ALI, given that the only residential land concession from LLHI, this agreement, however, access route to one of the town’s main tourism attractions— has been impugned to have been forged without proper consul- the Miyamit falls—is located right within ALI’s property (Ayala tation of the organization’s membership while being out-of-odds manager 2016). with the facts on the ground (Mendoza 2016; Hernandez 2014, 3). The most pressing concerns of ALI and LLHI, however, have However flawed, the order has nevertheless allowed LLHI, been their efforts to insulate the lands acquired for Alviera from with support from LGU officials, to drive forward land conversion coverage by the government’s land reform program. On one hand, proceedings against local settlers, who have reorganized them- vital to insulating Ayala Land’s 1,180-hectare lot has been its star- selves into a local association entitled the Aniban ng Nakakaisang tling mode of acquisition. Secured in 2012, the land transaction Mamamayan ng Hacienda Dolores (Aniban). In 2011, the Mayor occurred at a time when the Philippines’ Central Bank (BSP) of Porac granted LLHI the authority to fence their land despite had become the effective administrator of the land parcel (Ayala protests by residents and opposition municipal councilors; in 2012, Manager 2016), as the parcel in question had been mortgaged to a municipal ordinance reclassifying the land-use of LLHI’s prop- the BSP by the Puyat family’s Manila Bank (and eventually fore- erty was issued despite lacking legally-mandated public consul- closed) in the years after the Asian Financial Crisis (Dizon 2016). tation. Even more troubling, in the midst of demolitions, intim- While details as to the exact arrangement between ALI, Manila idation episodes, and outright killings, the municipal police has Bank, and BSP are murky, this process has—in line with an August been consistently reported to turn a blind eye to reports of human 10, 2012 Legal Opinion of the Philippines’ Department of Justice— rights violations (Tapang 2016; Mendoza 2016; Carranza 2016). In ultimately resulted in an effective exemption of the parcel from all this, LLHI has revealed itself as adopting more overtly patri- land reform coverage. On the basis of the BSP’s being granted monial methods than ALI, having harnessed both clientelist and fiscal and administrative autonomy by the New Central Bank Act coercive techniques of asserting control over territory that have of 1993, the Legal Opinion stated, any mandatory requirement for been standard fare among traditional Philippine political elites. BSP to transfer foreclosed agricultural lands that have come under its authority for land redistribution would constitute an undue “Heroes at the Backstage”: infringement of the Central Bank’s unique “discretion to allocate Emerging Power Geometries in Porac and utilize its resources” (Alegado 2012; Dizon 2016). As the above discussion has shown, the development dynamics In comparison to this exceptionalist acquisition tactic of of Alviera have hinged upon ALI’s harnessing a cornucopia of ALI, LLHI’s maneuvers have been more locally-focused. Having scalar strategies in the areas of inter-scalar coalition formation, purchased its 761.1-hectare property in 2003 in anticipation of planning, land acquisition, and consolidating supportive firm-local SCTEX’s completion, the company afterwards secured an exemp- relations. Yet the most consequential impacts of these and other tion order from DAR in 2006 on the basis that the lands within strategies have been its reshaping of local power networks which 16 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 17 have deepened ALI’s leverage over core governance processes. In modes of governance, as well as to granting planning, policy and discussing ALI’s role in local urban governance processes, an Ayala administrative concessions to key investors (Ortega 2012, 1125, officer confided: 1128). Collectively, such institutional dynamics have undermined the Porac local state’s bargaining position vis-à-vis prospective We shoulder all these—the [governance] responsibilities. Let’s say we investors, while simultaneously incentivizing stronger public-pri- develop this [a mixed-use estate]: anything that happens here is our call. It’s vate collaborations in order to compensate for perceived govern- supposed to be the call of the government. We’re just supposed to develop ance shortfalls, whether in employment generation, local enter- buildings and subdivisions within. But since the government’s not the one prise growth, and overall governance.5 developing, we basically become acting government. . . . Basically we are the But no less decisive has been the reputational capital that the “heroes at the backstage,” as far as government functions are concerned. firm has been able to amass for itself through the success of its Sometimes they [the LGU] don’t know any better. So we do it, so we assist previous ventures, including the technical and managerial compe- them. That’s how it goes in the Philippines. (Ayala manager 2016) tencies that have enabled its personnel to demonstrate expertise, and not to mention the capacity of its officers to adapt to relational What accounts for this position as “acting government” within dynamics at variegated contexts yet still attain de facto local lead- the territory of Alviera and the broader Porac municipality? ALI, ership. In this, ALI’s ability to project seniority, competency, and undoubtedly, has profited from its immense financial muscle legitimacy in its relations with its “junior” partners has been of to contract high-level services of all kinds (e.g., security, legal, cardinal importance, having purportedly relied upon their consen- promotional), as well as its ability to hone strategic linkages with sual appeals for support. By successfully garnering such positions key influentials, such as Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and of local hegemonic leadership, ALI, in short, is able to relatively Industry (PamCham), Pampanga’s governor, Porac’s mayor, and ensure LGU’s “spontaneous” seeking to be mentored by them, even especially former president Arroyo. And yet, based on the accounts if in so doing the company is able to reproduce and deepen the of informants, even more decisive has been the company’s “soft,” conditions of its influence. flexible methods of projecting and consolidating influence. Ayala It may indeed happen that such interventions by ALI into local insists that it “never controls” and “never fights” LGU players (Ayala urban governance may offer the Porac government capacity-aug- manager 2016). Instead, the company portrays its manner of influ- mentation opportunities—yet what should be clear is that ALI has encing as entailing a more indirect guiding and even mentoring been remarkably adept at leveraging such opportunities for longer- presence vis-à-vis local state officers, in which ALI seemingly term advantage. Coupled with the savvy of ALI staff at projecting assumes the role of a senior partner to the LGU in fulfilling of themselves into positions of local hegemonic leadership, the firm governance responsibilities: “We try our best to mentor them so has been able to systematically consolidate a new spatio-institu- that in the future, they know already what to do—but that’s already tional gestalt of governance surrounding Alviera in which they ideal since they always need our assistance. We mold them to think are able to indirectly mold governance activities over the produc- like us” (Ayala manager 2016). tion of urban space by means of soft interventions of competency Yet throughout the Alviera episode, ALI’s mentoring strategy provision, administrative guidance, and seeming beneficence. In to influencing local processes has apparently hinged upon two producing these new strains of governance, ALI’s influence over preconditions. It depends, for one, on the abiding proneness of peri- the municipality’s policy and development trajectory is itself urban LGU’s—in the context of neoliberalized urban governance— produced and reproduced. Insofar as wide institutional dispari- to actively seeking capacity augmentation from non-state actors ties between ALI and the LGU continue to exist, and insofar as the such as ALI, to adopting more entrepreneurial, investor-friendly municipality continues to be located in a setting of neoliberalized 18 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 19 inter-urban competition, there is every reason to expect that Porac local government will be continually consigned to be ALI’s junior partner in such urban governance collaborations.

BCDA’s Clark Green City: Redeveloping the Developers? Over the past two decades, the Bases Conversion and Development Authority has come to prominence as one of the most successful government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) in the Philippines. Established in 1992, the authority claims to be the single largest landholder in the country today, having inherited 41,500 hectares of former military bases across Northern Luzon, Central Luzon, and Metro Manila (BCDA 2013, 4, 8–9), which was tasked to convert into SEZs and mixed-use urban growth centers (House of Representatives 2010, 3-4). Independent of guaranteed budget appropriations, and directed by the BCDA Fig. 4. Construction of Clark Green City as of February 2016 Act to “encourage the active participation of the private sector,” Source: Author BCDA has also been noteworthy for harnessing private sector collaborations as one of its chief instruments for project development (BCDA 2013b, 18). Yet if influenced by market-oriented policy approaches, its operations have also been leagues away from patrimonial forms of urban governance in the Philippines. Owing to high pressures for sequestering the agency from corruption at the time of its establishment, highly-qualified technocrats have been regularly appointed to the agency’s Board of Directors and management—all of whom have remained answerable only to the Office of the President (Ordoñez 2015, 40). These features of BCDA have been central in the agency’s CGC project—the agency’s most significant venture since converting Fort Bonifacio into Bonifacio Global City in the 1990s. Spanning 9,450 hectares of the former Clark airbase in the municipalities of Capas and Bamban in Tarlac province, the mega-project is aimed by BCDA to become the Philippines’ first smart, green and disas- ter-resilient metropolis (BCDA 2013, 22–23). Planned to incorporate numerous urban functions, such as a financial and commercial center, green industrial zones, residential areas, districts for schools/universities and backup government offices, and urban farmlands as well as forest areas, and to be supported by networks Fig. 5. Clark Green City’s Planned Location and Land Use Distribution as of 2016 of already-existing and forthcoming infrastructures including Source: BCDA 20 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 21

SCTEX, the Clark International Airport and future Clark Rail from these LGUs’ jurisdiction since 1947, which the passage of the Bases CGC to Metro Manila, the venture is positioned, like ALI’s Alviera Conversion Act in 1992 sustained (Municipality of Capas 2011, 4–8). project, to become a core node of a budding Clark-centered aero- Accordingly, on June 9, 2014, a hearing of the Special Committee on tropolis (Lee 2015, 188). Bases Conversion at the Philippines’ House of Representatives was Beyond its metropolitan-scale aspirations, CGC is envisioned held at the behest of Tarlac LGU officials, where various misgivings as offering nothing less than a new model of urbanism for the were voiced concerning the project. Based on their testimonies, Philippines. As the project’s name suggests, it will be the country’s neither the congressmen, mayors, nor governor of Tarlac prov- first full-fledged eco-city, and will integrate a plethora of sustain- ince were reportedly consulted by BCDA throughout the planning ability features such as green spaces, urban farms, green build- process for CGC (House of Representatives 2014, 12, 18). ings, renewable energy, and sustainable transport into its design Paralleling LGU grievances has been the threat of antici- and operations (BCDA 2013, 22–23). But even more momentous pated displacement for townsfolk residing within CGC-spanned has been BCDA’s attempt in planning CGC to directly foster more areas. Though BCDA has been granted legal stewardship of the inclusive forms of urban development: at full development, CGC is lands comprising the whole CGC area, a considerable portion of foreseen to house around 800,000 workers in “slum-free” fashion, project lands has already been occupied by settler households, which BCDA plans to achieve by providing affordable, decent, and some of whom even claim to have resided within the area since quality housing (Sun Star Pampanga 2015).6 even before the creation of the airbase. Based on local surveys, At present, the mega-project’s master plan envisions CGC’s around 500 farming families stand to be relocated if the develop- development as a 50 year-long affair, though the first phase of ment proceeds—though if non-agricultural households within the the development until 2019 aims to construct two industrial area are included, the figure rises to nearly 20,000 (Letana 2016). zones, two mixed-use lots, a “global campus” of the University of Many of these same territories have also been among the ancestral the Philippines, a public park district, and roadworks all within domains of indigenous Aeta tribes, whose control over the lands a 1,300-hectare land area (BCDA 2014). These components of the has been severely disrupted since the creation of Clark airbase first phase of CGC are slated for accomplishment through several during the American colonial period. While such indigenous popu- PPP mechanisms (e.g., joint ventures), in which most of financing lations have not been able to regain complete possession of their and risk allocation will be borne by the private sector (Bingcang original ancestral lands, two Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title 2016). (CADT) have nonetheless been issued for their communities in Capas since the 1990s: the Aeta Sambal and Abellen area (6,671 Unrest in the Baselands: Community and LGU hectares) and the Aeta Mag-Antsi area (4312 hectares). Both of Opposition, and Master-Planning Dilemmas these CADT areas overlap with the military reservation of Capas With CGC’s master plan having been fully approved by the (House of Representatives 2014, 16). Philippine government last May 29, 2014 (Locsin 2014), it is still too Finally, as revealed by BCDA informants, another quandary early, as of writing, to provide a detailed assessment of the project’s faced by the project concerned the development of the CGC impact to date. Nonetheless, considerable stumbling blocks to the master plans. Developed with a wide range of experts, the master project have surfaced. Firstly, though the governance conundrums plan ultimately establishes the frame of the agency’s land bidding of the Capas and Bamban LGUs have not been as pronounced as processes with potential business partners, allowing it to evaluate Porac’s, CGC’s development has nevertheless created friction with different developers based on their overall capacity to bring the officials of these municipalities. These tensions concern how the plan to fruition (Ordoñez 2015, 41–43, 51). However, while the military base lands encompassed by CGC have been excluded from initial conceptual master plan for CGC was completed in 2013 22 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 23 by a consortium of PROS Architects and Woodfields Consultants, remains as seamless as possible with the mega-project (Casanova critical flaws were soon discerned. In particular, the most glaring 2016; Bingcang 2016). In 2015, for one, BCDA sponsored the attend- weakness of the initial plan lay in miscalculations of the gross floor ance of the mayors and planning officers of Capas and Bamban area (GFA) of the different land uses in the project, which had a in an urban planning training program at Nanyang Technological deleterious domino effect on plans and forecasts for items like University in Singapore for upgrading their municipalities’ urban utilities, population, finance, and investment. Additionally, it was planning capacities. characterized by an emphasis on intensive infrastructural development and a non-compact layout for CGC districts, which would have contradicted the sustainability commitments of CGC (Letana 2016).

The Scalar Politics of Intervention: Land Settlements to International Expertise On account of these challenges, BCDA, similar to ALI’s own efforts in Alviera, has had to engage in intensive local intervention processes. In response to LGU tensions, the authority agreed to formulating a technical working group (TWG) following the congressional hearing that has since functioned as a steering committee by decision makers located across different government levels. Chaired by Tarlac’s provincial governor, and composed of representatives from BCDA, local executives and congress persons Fig. 6. CGC’s Groundbreaking, featuring BCDA’s President (first from left), of Tarlac, the National Housing Authority, the National Commission Philippine President Aquino (second from left), BCDA’s Chairperson (third for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), as well as local farmers’ and indig- from left), the Philippine Public Works Secretary (fourth from left), and enous peoples’ associations, the TWG has been said to have held Capas’ Mayor (fifth from left), 2016 regular consultative meetings as a means for fostering inter-organ- Source: Joseph Vidal / Malacañang Photo Bureau (2016) ization consensus on projects (Sun Star Pampanga, 2016). As it appears, the success of the TWG has been borne out in the The BCDA-created TWG, in addition, also seems to have been reversal of the views of Tarlac officials: from being a vocal critic of the venue in which responses to the land claims of populations the project, the former mayor of Capas has since become one of within CGC areas have been discussed. On the end of the indig- its boosters, and was among those who attended CGC’s ground- enous Aeta, the NCIP has affirmed a commitment from BCDA to breaking last April 11, 2016 (see fig. 5.3) (Balita 2016). Joining first solicit the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of any indigenous such officials in their active promotion of the project, moreover, community that will be directly affected by CGC-related develop- was former President Aquino himself, whom some in BCDA have ment processes (Sunggod 2016). At the same time, however, BCDA credited to be CGC’s “number one marketing agent” in interna- officials assert that the boundaries of CGC were explicitly delin- tional venues in the past administration (Bingcang 2016). Similarly, eated in such a way so as not to overlap with lands covered by BCDA’s interventions apropos LGU’s have also extended into the the IP’s CADTs in the military reservation (Casanova 2016); for this creation of a long-term program of governance capacity-building purpose, the agency reportedly contracted a surveyor in November in order to ensure that the broader region surrounding CGC 2013, partly to segregate all CADT areas in the vicinity from the 24 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 25 mega-project (BCDA 2013c). Similarly, agency officials also reveal for affected farmers (Orejas 2015; 2016). This shift in resistance, in that currently-farming households will be offered lots, technical turn, has effectively allowed roadwork construction processes to inputs, and marketing assistance in order to participate as high- begin proceeding for the project (see fig. 5.4). er-value agricultural entrepreneurs in CGC’s urban farming district Lastly, shortfalls in the PROS and Woodfields master plan like- (Casanova 2016). But for those farmers who stand to be immedi- wise prompted the employment of multi-level strategic responses ately displaced by ongoing construction activities, TWG-formulated by the agency. Following the approval of the project by former guidelines allow for furnishing such households a financial sum President Aquino on May 2014 (for which in-house corrections to equivalent to a decade’s worth of agriculture-based income, or the CGC master plan were undertaken), BCDA launched an open roughly PHP300,000 per hectare on average (Orejas 2016).7 international competition for the optimization of the CGC concep- Even though it remains to be seen whether each of these policy tual master plan in mid-December 2014.8 More recently, BCDA directions for local populations will be sustained, their commu- inked a JV agreement with the Japan Overseas Infrastructure nication toward established communities within CGC areas Investment Corporation for Transport and Urban Development already appears to have diffused earlier opposition by residents. (JOIN) last March 2016 for crafting a more detailed CGC Master Emblematic of the shift in local sentiment toward the project are Development Plan (Letana 2016; Bingcang 2016). Not only is JOIN’s the views of the local Capas Green City and Proclamation No. 163 involvement in CGC’s master planning expected to assure poten- Affected Farmers Association Inc., which from forming barricades tial locators that the mega-project will fulfill the standards of against the entry of heavy road-construction equipment in April the Japanese government; the said entity has begun encouraging 2015, have reportedly become CGC supporters a year later on the Japanese investors in the Philippines to locate within the CGC area, basis of BCDA’s compensation packages and promised future lots while committing to help in garnering additional infrastructure funding from the Japanese government (Bingcang 2016). By such means, BCDA has contracted additional capacities and advanced its international network embeddedness by bypassing local entities for international-level actors.

Steering the Market: Emerging Power Geometries in CGC These interventions reveal the central importance of BCDA’s realignment of initially-unfavorable conditions across a variety of scalar terrains. Yet in achieving each of these scalar interventions, BCDA has also begun to consolidate a marked position of influence over urban governance processes in CGC-proximate areas. As a BCDA architect narrates,

The vision for the LGUs is that since we do not want Clark Green City to be an island, unlike BGC [Bonifacio Global City], we want the neighboring LGUs to grow along with Clark Green City. . . . We want these LGUs to integrate the Clark Green City development in their own plans. . . . By being a Fig. 7. CGC Roadworks in Brgy. Aranguren, Capas, where a farmers’ barricade was staged in April 2015 model agency, and building a model city, we plan to influence our neigh- Source: Author boring LGUs. (Letana 2016) 26 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 27

While this desire to foster the capacities of CGC-adjacent production of CGC. In contradistinction to ALI’s hegemonic lead- LGUs has been shared among informants, another motive also has ership over the Porac LGU, such institutional features of BCDA been at play: namely, isolating the project and BCDA’s business have allowed it to pool governing resources from the private sector partners from political undercurrents associated with intra-state while nevertheless co-opting their participation into realizing the incoherence and the Philippine electoral cycle. BCDA empha- formulated master plan (Ordoñez 2015, 39). sizes that a defining feature of its urban development model has This advantaged position of BCDA can be traced to several involved shielding “private partners from political risks, such as conditions. On one hand, the 1992 Bases Conversion law furnished those associated with changes in administration” (BCDA 2013, 5); the authority with a purportedly “very powerful” charter, which likewise, among the agency’s responsibilities in its JV agreements granted BCDA monopoly-level control over all the lands that for CGC are commitments to assisting developers in politicized have come under its jurisdiction (Bingcang 2016). In turn, BCDA’s processes such as securing all required government approvals, resulting status as a monopoly merchant of strategically-located, supporting the acquisition of required permits, and coordinating commercially-attractive base lands has vested BCDA with a firm with LGUs (BCDA 2015b, 6–7). In this vein, BCDA’s interventions initial bargaining position against the private sector (Casanova to strengthen LGU capacities directly contributes to the agency’s 2016). Beyond being the monopoly seller/lessor of lands in its efforts to minimize political disruptions against CGC’s develop- portfolio, however, BCDA has been simultaneously capacitated ment. By projecting its influence over other government bodies, by Bases Conversion Act with significant development, adminis- and working to reconfigure key aspects of their operations along its trative and regulatory powers over the territories that fall under own model of technocratic governance, BCDA has installed wider its jurisdiction, furnishing it with multiple bases with which to institutional and relational buffers against a backdrop of person- influence private developers beyond bidding. Though it does not alized state dynamics which have regularly threatened investors’ always maximize such powers, BCDA nonetheless can function needs for regulatory predictability (McKay 2006). as an effective city government for CGC, with all the powers and But if certain features of BCDA’s governance approaches are capacities that are normally afforded to LGUs (Ordoñez 2015, 63; technocratic in orientation, the earlier discussion also indicates Bingcang 2016). Finally, not to be underestimated has been the that BCDA and CGC’s institutional complexion cannot be reduced overall efficacy of BCDA’s technocratically-oriented bureaucracy, to standard neoliberal mores. Indeed, the rigor with which the which has been undergoing systematic capacity-building efforts at agency has formulated its master plans and harnessed them both domestic and international venues, particularly in the areas in bidding procedures suggests that BCDA possesses unusually of urban planning and management (Letana 2016). authoritative features in the landscape of Philippine state anemia, Though initially formulated in market-liberal mores, a fortui- which has merited its designation by some observers as a nascent tous set of circumstances has enabled the agency to consolidate “strong state technocracy” (Cardenas 2016). BCDA officers them- a new hybrid regime of spatial production over CGC with both selves express awareness of the distinct institutional facets of the market-oriented and quasi-“strong state” characteristics. Mirroring, agency, noting that good parallels have existed between them and in this sense, forms of selective government steerage of market Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (Letana 2016), which dynamics that have been observed in East Asian developmental have been critical in honing a balance in the city-state between states like Singapore (Wade 1990, 30), such efforts by BCDA have developmental and neoliberal policy regimes (Haila 2015, 15, conformed with the parameters laid down by developers’ revenue 17–18). By this view, BCDA has hybridized market-liberal mores imperatives, even while seeking to bend their trajectories to other with quasi-“strong state” components, which have enabled it to purposes. As echoed by BCDA’s president development: exercise relatively greater power over business in governing the 28 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 29

BCDA is not simply a developer. We are not a market player. We are the Though arrived at by dramatically different means, the forma- market, actually. We set the market. We set the platform for developers, tion of these new urban regimes around both mega-projects infrastructure builders, utility provider, businesses to come in. We are the demonstrates an often-overlooked reality concerning the creation stage, basically. (Casanova 2016) of new urban spaces in the Manila MUR: in a context of immense spatial and institutional fragmentation, the production of “world- The Scalar Powers of Neoliberal Urbanism class” urban spaces has hinged upon the simultaneous produc- Alviera and Clark Green City: these mega-projects have not only tion of new institutional formations, new governance gestalts, and served as nascent growth poles in a broader wave of peri-urban new lattices of power able to underwrite a modicum of stability expansion—they have come to fore as the frontiers of new constel- throughout the entire cycle of project implementation. Ironically, lations of power amidst Philippine neoliberal urbanism. Both the overall effect, even when sporting divergent forms of urbanism ventures, after all, have hinged on intensive public-private modes (i.e., enclave vs. inclusive), has been a diminution of public power of collaboration, while also harnessing a wide range of market- over nominally-democratic institutions in favor of governance friendly mechanisms. Similarly, they have gained immensely regimes ultimately directed by corporate elites or state technocrats. from entrepreneurial pressures affecting LGUs, which has firmly incentivized local state officials to grant considerable influence to Power and Neoliberal Governance in a mega-project developers—to the extent, at times, of delegating to Changing Peri-Urban Landscape them entire urban governance functions. Beyond their immediate locales, what do the development Whether due to efforts to assemble governing coalitions processes of Alviera and CGC tell us about the workings of urban spanning power-brokers from the highest echelons of national governance and spatial power in the Philippines and other similar politics to municipal levels, to governance augmentation inter- countries today? While the outcomes of the Alviera and CGC ventions for affected LGUs, to measures that reshuffle the scalar episodes have partly reaffirmed narratives concerning the weak features of their respective institutional jurisdictions, and finally nature of the Philippine state (Hutchcroft 1997), the salience of to the creation of new institutional and quasi-legal instruments, patrimonial elites in urban governance (Shatkin 2006; Murphy and the landscapes of power within the municipalities have under- Hogan 2012), and the deleterious impacts of neoliberal restruc- gone dramatic shifts, effectively placing ALI and BCDA at the turing (Bello et al. 2014), other processes in both case studies are commanding heights of the local production and governance of less straightforward. Can BCDA’s current position of institutional urban space. To achieve its self-professed role as acting govern- strength and its newfound commitment to “slum-free” urbanism be ment in Alviera, ALI has projected hegemonic leadership over the easily interpreted as a weak state apparatus or as an exclusionary moribund Porac LGU—leveraging upon its reputational capital purveyor of neoliberal-urban regimes? Likewise, while some as the Philippines’ premier property developer and its assembled informants speculated as to possible links between ALI’s oper- forms of expertise to harness spontaneous appeals for assistance ations and LLHI’s more coercive actions (Carranza 2016), might and/or augmentation for advancing its commercial prerogatives. not the firm’s reported long-term avoidance of patrimonial tactics In the case of CGC, the exceptionalist composition of BCDA, which (Batalla 1999), along with the consistent avowals of all interviewed has endowed it with monopoly ownership as well as administra- Porac LGU officials that “Ayala is different” (Lansangan 2016; dela tive, regulatory, and development control over its land assets, has Cruz 2016; Tapang 2016) make it problematic to lump it together granted the agency tremendous leverage to serve as a de facto with more consistently rentierist fractions of Philippine business? steerer, not only of urban governance in adjacent LGUs, but also Amidst such disparities, it becomes difficult to presume the cohe- of private sector partners. siveness of a single regime of neoliberalized spatial production in 30 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 31

Philippines. As it seems, a variety of actually-existing neoliberal instruments, new forms of expertise and relational know-how, new regimes have been at play in the Philippines—sharing the employ- networks and coalitions of actors, and new institutional capacities ment of a continuum of market-oriented practices of spatial for urban development and governance. In this vein, the exercise production, yet differing substantially as to their exact regulatory of power by ALI and BCDA in developing their mega-projects has contents, development trajectories, and political imperatives. generally been less about the assertion of directly repressive forms One could even go further by contending that these subnational of control, and more about “gaining and fusing a capacity to act” varieties of neoliberalism have been an outcome of neoliberal state (Stone 2015, 115) otherwise dispersed across a mélange of actors. rescaling all along. With the unravelling of nationally-standardized The purveyors of power, in such a context, have instead revealed spatial governance frameworks, the shift toward decentralized themselves to be more predisposed toward eliciting the consensual and area-customized governance regimes that have accompa- collaboration of various forces in a broader governing coalition, nied processes of neoliberalization has also granted subnational often by leveraging upon existing assets and incentives for coop- jurisdictions, especially cities, far more incentive and flexibility eration, strategically adapting to relational dynamics at diverse to experiment with new policy and institutional arrangements, settings, creating new knowledge, and improvising new institu- whether to shore up local economic opportunities or to pursue tional approaches toward potential allies. Among neoliberalized other policy objectives (Peck, Theodore, and Brenner 2009). Though mega-projects, one might say, the dynamics of power themselves the adoption of such entrepreneurial arrangements has tended to have become entrepreneurial. intensify patterns of uneven spatial development between and These come with two caveats, however. On one hand, this within cities, it has also tended to encourage diverse, place-spe- entrepreneurialized power to convene coalitions, along with the cific forms of governance across different locations (Brenner 2004, collective capacities that they represent, still admits of hegemonic 474), most especially among municipal governments jockeying for control. As ALI’s and BCDA’s influencing tendencies have shown, better competitive positions. While the variety of such subnational even in the midst of adaptation to coalitional allies and scalar governance formations may be far from unlimited, it is likely that settings, decision-making control over the frame of mega-project more plural currents have obtained around different urban sites development has remained squarely among main project propo- and around different organizational units than has tended to be nents. Whether formalized or not in a master plan or other instru- recognized in Philippine urban governance discussions. ments, both organizations have demonstrated that they retain veto A second insight concerns how power relations have been leverage to reject disruptions to anticipated project trajectories as employed in the process of mega-project development in the well as strategic policy processes. This can mainly be traced to both Manila MUR. Indeed, both Alviera and CGC have witnessed the organizations’ possession of crucial resources (e.g., land, expertise) realignment of power networks that have obtained in their host whose removal would effectively jeopardize the mega-projects at localities, which has been embedded in new scalar gestalts of stake and all forms of gain (whether real or imagined) that other governance. Yet seen from another angle, these great transfor- allies might expect from their implementation. mations of scalar and institutional realities affirm the established But if power has been productive in the development of Alviera Foucauldian precept that “power is productive” (Foucault 1978)—if and CGC, it has also remained profoundly territorial, having been with an added twist. engrossed in the management, manipulation, and policing of For power, after all, in the process of developing Alviera and spatio-institutional boundaries. This has been borne out in the CGC has been eminently productive: the power to produce urban varieties of spatial politics involved in the mega-projects: similar space in the peri-urban periphery has itself produced new insti- to elsewhere, the reshuffling of scalar formations that has accom- tutional norms and arrangements, new legal and quasi-legal panied these ventures has been instrumental in rendering the 32 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 33 territorial lines of authority far more “porous, unstable, and prone not even have they been the beachheads of perhaps the most ambi- to transgressions and transformations” (Swyngedouw 2000, 68), tious wave of city-building to have swept the country since the giving rise to ambiguous institutional boundaries between nomi- aftermath of World War II. In truth, their development provides a nally-public and non-democratic forms of urban governance. Yet privileged panorama for discerning finer shifts in the fragmented in the case of both projects, such institutional porosity has hardly landscapes of governance, and indeed, the birth and expansion— translated into a free flow of governance influence: though ALI out from the ashes of neoliberal adjustment—of a cornucopia of and BCDA differ on the formation of spatial enclaves, the concur- new regulatory orders and scale-manipulating instruments for rence of both organizations on the need to shield project processes creating and maintaining them. How will these new governance from political risks and the commensurate need to shoulder paltry gestalts develop in the years to come, both in themselves and with LGU activities, alludes to the heightened importance of managing one another? And what relationships will they come to establish institutional boundary-setting dynamics that have prevailed in with nominally-democratic governing orders whose jurisdictional both projects’ relations with established government units. To authority they have subtly yet indelibly reconfigured—if not already the entrepreneurial power of assembling governance capacities displaced? The eventual responses to these questions will prove is welded the police power to territorially exclude a spectrum of to be of historic importance not just to the maneuverings of state undesired forces within the Philippines’ fragmented universe of and capital in neoliberalized contexts, but also to the prospects urban governance. of still-struggling, still-evolving movements of non-elite forces to No doubt, it can be argued that the use of these institutional claim universal and democratic rights to the city. boundary-setting practices has been an integral part of both Alviera and CGC’s aims to produce spaces that deliver upon the preferences of global investors, modernized fractions of Philippine Endnotes business, and prospective clientele from the middle-class upwards, 1. The material for this chapter was originally written in mid-2016, prior to the who have all been documented to be predisposed to more program- election of the present administration of Rodrigo Duterte. Circumstances since then have prompted some outward changes in the two mega-pro- matic forms of governance (McKay 2006; Hutchcroft 1998). But jects being studied—particularly with the rebranding of Clark Green City as more importantly, the use of this territorial power in both projects “New Clark City.” Despite such developments, there is little reason to believe has foregrounded an expanding domain of political and regula- that the fundamental governance dynamics discussed in this chapter have tory activity in which the production of prime urban space has altered in the period since then up to the time of writing. 2. Other signal features of market-friendly urban governance were adopted become intertwined with the creation and policing of institutional by means of national legislation over the years. In 1992, major responsibil- 9 territories. Distinct, if still linked, from the creation of spatial ities for socialized housing were ceded over to the private sector with the enclaves, this rapprochement has hardly been a foregone conclu- passage of the Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA), even as net- sion: ultimately, it has hinged on the accumulation of “transversal worked, public-private forms of urban infrastructural development were bordering capabilities” (Sassen 2013, 69) and their deployment to enabled through the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Act of 1990, and its amendment in 1993 (Bello et al. 2014, 92–96, 203). exclude disruptive processes from the institutional geographies of 3. Porac is the municipality with the largest land area in Pampanga province, re-scaled governance formations. most of which has been dedicated to forest reserve (45.50 percent), lahar Viewed before these trends, the emerging mega-projects investi- (26.73 percent) and agricultural (22.89 percent) uses (Municipal Govern- gated in this chapter become even more remarkable. Not only have ment of Porac 2016, 2, 27, 29). Lahar areas stand out prominently as the town was one of the most devastated in the CL region by the eruption of Mt. these mega-projects been among the largest and most ambitious of Pinatubo in 1991 (Municipal Government of Porac 2016, 1). their kind in the Philippines today; not only have they been at the 4. According to the Index, Economic Dynamism covers data mainly related to heart of contemporary efforts to inject new strands of urbanism; business registration, employment, and financial institutions; Government 34 Great Transformations JERIK CRUZ 35

Efficiency to transparency and accountability, public finance, performance Bases Conversion and Development Authority, March 8. Accessed June 2, recognition, business responsiveness, and basic government services; and 2016. http://www.bcda.gov.ph/news_articles/show/516. infrastructure to road network, basic utilities, and registered vehicles (Na- Dumlao, Doris. 2014. “Ayala Land Investing P90B in Porac Estate.” Philippine tional Competitiveness Council 2014). Daily Inquirer, May 19. Accessed May 21, 2016. http://business.inquirer. 5. Even while professing reserve at the prospect of establishing new PPPs net/192163/ayala-land-investing-p90b-in-porac-estate. within Porac, for instance, the town’s municipal planner still justified ap- ———. 2014. “Ayala to Build Nuvali-style Development in Pampanga.” Philip- pealing to ALI’s help in formulating the municipality’s development plans pine Daily Inquirer, May 26. Accessed May 19, 2016. http://business.inquirer. on the following basis: net/171458/ayala-to-build-nuvali-style-development-in-pampanga. “Right now we’re already talking that we need their help because their iMoney.ph. 2015. “Beyond Metro Manila: The 4 Best-buy Cities for Property.” development, they’re the ones who know how to do it. . . . If only they could GMA News Online, April 22. Accessed May 14, 2016. http://www.gmanet- sponsor it, they could help us with our Comprehensive Development Plan, work.com/news/story/474342/money/beyond-metro-manila-the-4-best- because they’ll be the center [of development]. . . . If Porac can possibly buy-cities-for-property. become a city, if Porac really progresses, if their development is realized, Japan International Cooperation Agency. 2014. “Philippine Government Adopts it’s only [then] that we will be given a chance for Porac to be uplifted.” Manila Transport Plan Based on JICA Study.” Japan International Coopera- (Lansangan 2016 trans.) tion Agency, September 25. Accessed April 29, 2016. http://www.jica.go.jp/ 6. Tellingly, one of the very first CGC initiatives being undertaken has entailed english/news/field/2014/140925_03.html. the construction of 2,000 units of affordable rental housing across 279 hec- ———. n.d. “Roadmap of Transport Infrastructure Development for Metro Ma- tares of land for approximately 85,000 minimum wage earners, as part of a nila and its Surrounding Areas: Main Points of Roadmap.” Japan Interna- partnership between BCDA and the Philippines’ Home Development Mutu- tional Cooperation Agency. 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Locating the Right to vestment Brief. Taguig City: BCDA. the City in the Global South. London: Routledge. ———. 2013c. “Survey of BCDA Properties in Clark Special Economic Zone, Sassen, Saskia. 2013. “When the Center No Longer Holds: Cities as Frontier Clark Green City, and Clark Freeport Zone.” Bases Conversion and Devel- Zones.” Cities 34: 67–70. opment Authority. August 13. Accessed June 2, 2016. http://www.bcda.gov. Shatkin, Gavin. 2008. “The City and the Bottom Line: Urban Megaprojects and ph/bids/show/306. the Privatization of Planning in Southeast Asia.” Environment and Planning ———. 2014. 2014 Annual Report: Building the Future Today. Taguig City: BCDA. A 40.2: 383–401. ———. 2015. “Invitation to Bid as BCDA’s Joint Venture Partner in the Develop- ———. 2016. “Global Cities of the South: Emerging Perspectives on Growth and ment of Clark Green City.” Bases Conversion and Development Authority. Inequality.” In Readings in Planning Theory, edited by Susan Fainstein and May 25. 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LUKAS KAELIN House of Representatives. 2014. Special Committee on Bases Conversion. Hear- ing: 9 June 2014. 16th Cong., 1st regular sess. Quezon City: House of Repre- sentatives. Municipality of Capas. 2011. Comprehensive Land Use Plan: Capas, Tarlac: 2011– 2020. Capas: Municipality of Capas. Municipal Government of Porac. n.d. Comprehensive Land Use Plan 2012 to Struggling for Public Spaces 2017 (Final Draft of Revision). Comprehensive Land Use Plan Draft. Porac: Municipal Government of Porac. The Political Significance of Manila’s National Competitiveness Council. 2014. “Cities and Municipalities Competi- tiveness Index.” National Competitiveness Council. May 7, 2016. http://www. Segregated Urban Landscape competitive.org.ph/cmcindex/pages/rankings. Philippine Economic Zone Authority. 2014. Alviera Industrial Park. Project Brief. Taguig: Philippine Economic Zone Authority.

Interviews HAVING TRAVELLED WITH EASE across the different coun- Ayala executive [anon.]. Executive, Ayala Land Inc. February 12, 2016. Ayala Tri- tries of nineteenth-century Europe, José Rizal experiences “el angle Gardens, Makati. demonio de las comparaciones” upon his return to Manila. This Ayala manager [anon.]. Manager, Ayala Land Inc. February 3, 2016. Ayala Trian- gle Gardens, Makati. “demon” no longer allows him to see Manila without constantly Bingcang, Joshua. Vice President for Business Development, Bases Conversion been reminded of the cities in Europe. This “demon of compar- and Development Authority. February 22, 2016. BCDA Corporate Center, ison” created a form of double-consciousness, such that Rizal Taguig City. could not help but experience the rising German capital Berlin Cardenas, Kenneth. PhD Candidate, York University. January 22, 2016. Skype interview. without simultaneously thinking of then provincial Manila and Carranza, Danny. National Secretary General, Katarungan/Rights Network. vice versa. His perspective on Manila had changed. It is this story January 18, 2016. Quezon City. that serves as the title of Benedict Anderson’s essay collection on ———. January 22, 2016. Katarungan Office. Quezon City. Southeast Asia, The Spectre of Comparisons. It is this epistemolog- Casanova, Arnel. President and CEO, Bases Conversion and Development Au- ical vantage point that allowed Rizal to judge Spain’s backwardness thority. February 18, 2016. BCDA Corporate Center, Taguig City. de la Cruz, Condralito. Mayor, Municipality of Porac. February 15, 2016. Porac- from the perspective of more progressive European nations in the City Hall, Pampanga. way the Spaniards judged the Philippines (B. Anderson 1998, 229). Dizon, Arnel. Regional Director, Department of Agrarian Reform, Regional Of- Thinking about public spaces and writing about the city of Manila fice III. February 16, 2016. DAR Region III Office, San Fernando, Pampanga. cannot be disentangled from that epistemological vantage point. Enriquez, Araceli. Supervisor, Social Action Center of Pampanga. February 4, 2016. Apalit, Pampanga. Not only nations are imagined communities—to refer to Benedict ———. February 27, 2016. Apalit, Pampanga. Anderson’s famous phrase—cities are, too. Talking about cities is Lansangan, Glenn. Planning and Development Coordinator, Municipality of thus largely shaped by our own experience and imagination. Porac. February 15, 2016. Porac City Hall, Pampanga. This essay deals with the political significance of the urban Letana, Paul. Architect, Bases Conversion and Development Authority. Febru- landscape of Manila. Key to this analysis is how the notion of the ary 26, 2016. Clark Green City Project, Clark Freeport Zone. Mendoza, Magis. Partner, DMBM Associates (Lawyers to Aniban). February 25, “public” plays out with respect to the polarity of private and public. 2016. Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City. The shape of the public is an index of the democratic organiza- Sunggod, Salong. Regional Director, National Commission for Indigenous Peo- tion of any larger community; without a public, an essential aspect ples. February 24, 2016. NCIP Region III Office, San Fernando, Pampanga. Tapang, Mike. Municipal Councilor, Municipality of Porac. February 27, 2016. Porac, Pampanga. 41 42 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 43 of democracy is lacking. It would be difficult to imagine democ- for democratic practices, as the public sphere and spaces play a racy without the actual free exchange of arguments and opinions, key role for democratic self-governance. The third part will thus insights and convictions, between citizens. This is what the public outline the most prominent philosophical theories in this regard is about. The public is thereby understood in its metaphorical put forward by John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, and Jürgen Habermas. significance as the public sphere of mediated discussion in mass Fourth, this paper will argue that the public, however, is not only media and communicative political participation as well as in its relevant in terms of communication structures, but also in its concrete spatial significance of chance encounters in the public spatial dimension to create venues of concrete encounter in the squares and spaces. public streets and squares. Sidewalks and streets are the essen- This essay will focus on the spatial aspects of the public, yet tial factors that make a city livable by fostering a public life that still reflect on its significance by tying it to the larger discussion of provides safety and contact. Yet, that function requires a certain the political public sphere as put forward by John Dewey, Hannah organization of the city and a certain mentality. Fifth, it will show Arendt, and Jürgen Habermas. The topic is the enigmatic notion of how the segmentation of Manila into different strictly separated the public in its different meanings—as public life, public streets neighborhoods makes such public life difficult, if not impossible. and spaces, and public sphere. Its key idea is simple: how can one The sixth and final part will highlight the problems arising for conceive of urban spaces conductive to democracy? And how can democratic practice from the lack of common public life and we evaluate the contested (and congested) urban space of Manila shared public spaces. with such an ideal? The tangible and visible ideal of democratic spaces are often The City as Venue of Emancipation seen as realized in the Greek agora, a space at once for the exchange There is no single identifying characteristics of “the city.” of goods as it is for political ideas. Nowadays, we find it increas- There is not even a single identifying set characteristics of “the ingly hard to imagine how spaces conducive for democracy would modern city.” Cities have different sizes, different origins, and are look like.1 This essay wants to contribute to such a re-imagination. embedded in different cultural, social, and economic practices. In order to explain the political significance of the urban public, it Cities might develop around market-places, military bases, facto- will dwell upon different theoretical disciplines and traditions to ries, monasteries, or a mix of these different institutions. Whatever address the political implication of the specific urban organization the concrete formation conditions, cities can be characterized as of Metro Manila. larger settlements with professional differentiation and speciali- To understand this question from a philosophical perspective, zation against the backdrop of rural subsistence farming. For this however, we need to take a step back and clarify the city as a reason, Max Weber understood the city (with the European medi- specific form of human life. This article will be developed through eval city in mind) in a fundamental opposition to the countryside. six parts in order to clarify this. First, following Max Weber, it Next to the role of Protestantism, the unique configuration of the will outline the city as a venue of economic, social, and political European city was responsible for the evolution of modernity. emancipation. Second, a closer look will explore the specifics of The strict polarity between the city and the countryside was for a the political emancipation in understanding the city as a venue of long time marked by the city-walls, which separated two radically self-organization. Still, we already know that the city as a collective different forms of societies. Until far into the modern age, walls attempt to shape the world according to the “heart’s desire” (cf. surrounding cities (and not borders between nation-states) were Robert Park), is distorted by an uneven influence of shaping the the main divisions between communities. The modern city can city, i.e., by the power of Capital. Part of the problem of this distor- thus be understood as revolutionary in its economic, political, and tion is its impact on the public. This is particularly worrisome social structure. 44 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 45

On the economic level, the self-sufficiency of the household in for administration only gained increasing influence and power traditional subsistence farming can be contrasted by the speciali- (Weber 1972, 755). With the growing importance of cities, however, zation of city-settlers and their mutual inter-dependence mediated the affluent class of city dwellers was able to gain more power for by the market. Hegel describes this mutual dependence concisely self-organization. Thus, the transition from rural to urban life can in his concept of “civil society” (bürgerliche Gesellschaft), which be framed in terms of political emancipation. For the individual, requires the citizens—note the link of city and citizen—to leave this transition amounts to the development of the political citizen. home and household to make a living outside in the realm of free On the social level, the transition from the closed communal market exchange governed by competition. Leaving family and rural setting to the city means a deregulation of social contacts. home, the individual must act upon an entirely different logic. Instead of the familiar patterns of human interactions, city Rather than particular altruism (doing things for the family) which dwellers usually deal with a large number of anonymous encoun- prevalent in the family and the entire household in a subsistence ters among strangers. While rural life follows socially predictable economy, life in the city requires an egotistical attitude (doing patterns, urban life is filled with unplanned social encounters. The things for yourself). The market-place works precisely through management of this new form of sociality requires a strict sepa- the complementary interest and interplay of mutually egoistical ration between private and public life. To deal with the plurality non-self-sufficient actors. Because of their radical dependency on of daily encounters of strangers, city-dwellers have to develop a others, city dwellers have to leave household and family to provide new economy of attention. Dealing with strangers in the same for their needs on the market place. For the individual, this tran- way as villagers do with occasional travelers, for example, would sition from rural subsistence economy to necessary and yet free be unpractical, even factually impossible. The public life is thus market exchange means an emancipation from fixed forms of rural characterized by a mentality of aloofness, detachment, and airi- life to a choice (albeit a limited one) among different forms of life ness—as Georg Simmel points out (1903). In the anonymity of the in the city. The city thus served as a necessary requirement for the city, the instances of rural control no longer apply. Rather than the development of the economic bourgeois. everyday handling of familiarity, behavior in the city is impreg- On the political level, the difference between the city and nated in a complex system of codes. For the individual, this change the rural life amounts in the medieval setting to the alternative amounts to the development of the bourgeois individual with the between rural feudalism and (at first limited) urban democratic strict separation between private and public life. self-organization. Feudalism can be characterized as a particular However, it would be misleading to understand this emanci- form of serfdom, where “serfs had juridically restricted mobility” patory development undialectical without the emergence of new (P. Anderson 1974, 147). Peasants were tied to the soil and were constraints. One might even challenge this understanding of the not the owners of the land they occupied and tilled. Still, they city as “venue of emancipation” on the ground that cities have had to pay rents to their feudal lord and were submitted to the always been built around (and impregnated by) power: parochial, latter’s jurisdiction. The city, by contrast, allowed for some degree state, military, trade and/or financial power have always stood at of self-organization or at least self-administration, even though its center. Stressing cities as venues of power helps us to under- this self-organization was for a long time restricted to a small stand that these processes of political, economic, and social trans- class of privileged citizens (such as the patricians during the late formation do not necessarily lead to individual liberation. Rather, Middle Ages). In Medieval Germany, one of the significant priv- the emancipation from the old powers and constraints might ileges of cities was their constitution as commune with its own easily be exchanged for new ones.2 On the level of economic eman- administrative body, even if the sheriff Schultheiß( ) was appointed cipation, the “free” market exchange turns out to be only formally by the prince or bishop, the elected mayor initially responsible free, but it is factually unequal in terms of knowledge and the 46 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 47 bargaining position. The economic liberation from the depend- but also of the combined reason manifested throughout history. ency on the self-sufficient household brings along the inequality Cities—just like old medieval texts—are palimpsests, where layers of the Capitalist marketplace—with the difference in attitude of upon layers have been “written” and the former layers, however the different actors well-observed by Karl Marx (1887, 123): “the blurred, are still visible. The most visible expression in contempo- money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of rary Manila of these layers are the massive structures of Intramuros, labour power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of impor- the remnants of the Spanish colonialization. But less monumental tance, smirking, intent on business; the other timid and holding structures that are embedded in the daily life in the city like the back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has network of roads and the political administration of the barangays nothing to expect but—a hiding (Gerberei).” The liberation from and so on, are equally to be understood in their historical genesis, the economic dependency from the feudal lord is traded with new since they carry with them the desires and intention of past gener- forms of modern serfdoms on the labor market. On the level of ations and how they shaped the city. the social emancipation, life in the city brings along differentiated This optimistic notion of the city as a quasi-spontaneous, actual and sophisticated forms of social control. Social behavior is no less expression of human desires has to be adjusted to incorporate the regimented and requires the strict separation of private and public historical dimension. Many inadequacies of contemporary city life (something that will be discussed in detail below). are expressions of past ideas of shaping the world according to one’s “heart’s desires.” The emphasis on private transport and the The City as Venue of Self-Organization neglect of public transport might have captured the imagination The modern city, therefore, played a significant role in the and ideals of past generations, but it creates, nowadays, negative emancipation of the individual from its “natural” or “traditional” consequences for the entire urban population and the environ- forms of life. The emancipation process on the political level trans- ment alike. The absence of meaningful and successful city planning lated into the demand for democratic self-governance; cities (from for almost the entire region of Metro Manila brings along a lack ancient Greece onward) played a crucial role in the development of parks and recreation areas: things that might not have been of of democratic self-governance. As cultural artifacts, they can (on great importance to the ideals of past generation, when the popu- a very general level) be understood, according to Robert E. Park, lation had been smaller and motorized traffic a privilege of a small as “man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful affluent minority. We live, so to speak, continuously in an environ- attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s ment created by the dreams of our ancestors, dreams that might desire” (as cited in Harvey 2012, 3). Cities, thus, are expressions of well have transformed circumstances turn into nightmares.3 human desires. The question to ask, however, is how human desires The optimistic notion of the city as the outflow of human desires are expressed, filtered, and selected to give shape to the city. might further be put into question by asking about whose desires To understand the city in terms of democratic self-organization are materialized in the contemporary city. In view of the deregula- in the narrow sense—in terms, that is, of due process of choosing tion and globalization, cities increasingly understand themselves officials in equal and fair elections—might not do justice to the as entrepreneurial actors with the need to position themselves production and reproduction of urban life as a very particular way toward competing cities in order to attract investments, wealthy of living. Rather, the production of the city takes place as a common citizens, potent companies, and tourists. In Germany, the lack of effort of which self-governing the urban environment is only a part. federal and state funding for cities—a trend that started in the late City dwellers produce an environment according to their “heart’s 1960s—was a major cause for the deregulation and privatization of desire”—the city becomes an expression of what Hegel would call cities (Häußermann, Läpple, and Siebel 2008, 282) This has opened “objective spirit.” The city is an expression not only of human desire, up cities and made them interesting for investors, and has even led 48 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 49 to a gradual decline of the city government’s political influence to answered by reference to (foreign) investors and their (profit-ori- shape urban policies. For instance, in the decade after World War ented) desires rather than the desire and needs of city-dwellers. The II, German cities kept some power to shape the city through their shape and organization of the city follows thus less the needs of public utility housing enterprises in their own hands. The privatiza- citizens but the profit-orientation of investors. Certainly, the needs tion of these enterprises has weakened the position of cities and has and interests of citizens and investors might converge, however, in transferred power from political administration to the free market. politically significant aspects there are different agendas. Moreover, As a consequence, it is not primarily the city-dwellers’ desires it is important to ask which types of citizens are excluded from the that is materialized, in the concrete structure of the city, but the formation of the city according to the desires of wealthy investors. ones of wealthy private investors. Indeed, it is not the political citi- In Metro Manila, we find a radicalized notion of this opposition zens who decide about the forms and structures of their polity, but between the needs and wants of urban citizens and the interests wealthy individuals who see the city as an investment opportunity of wealthy private city-developers. Manila, as described by Peter and who often have divergent interests from the inhabitants. The Murphy and Trevor Hogan, “is one of the world’s most fragmented, group of individuals who by living, working, and commuting in privatized and un-public of cities” (2012, 10). Given the weak role the city take an existential interest in their environment do not of the city government and the limited implementation of civil decide on the parameters of their cities insofar as private inves- planning, city-building in Manila lies in the hands of a couple of tors decide upon construction and development projects. Yet it powerful families.5 If we thus ask the question according to whose would be misleading to understand this shift one-dimensionally desires the larger city of Metro Manila is modelled, then the answer as one from citizens to investors. Rather, it must be understood has to point to a number of powerful families who engage in private as a shift, in Marxist terms, from one bourgeoisie (industrial capi- urban development and mold their urban land according to their talists) to another (financial investors).4 As David Harvey and Lata particular desires—along the alleged desires of the wealthy tenants Chatterjee point out, capital that “lies waste” in times of crisis of their constructions. The needs, wants, and desires of everybody is reinvested in (city) construction (1974, 22–36.) The less cities else are marginalized; these desires normally include the desire to keep their own housing projects, the more they are dependent on be unharmed by noise and environmental pollution, being able to these investments. In case of debt-ridden cities, this dependency safely walk the streets, or more generally, simply having a say in the and lack of political power becomes even more glaring. Regarding transformation of their environment. indebted Western nation-states, Wolfgang Streeck has pointed out This marginalization of the needs, wants, and desires of the the power shift from citizens to investors. The withering of their vast majority of the citizens of Manila requires a struggle to re-ap- political power lies in their demand to cater to the needs of inves- propriate the city. Theses struggles can take on different forms to tors, which in case of conflict, trump the needs of citizens (Streeck counter marginalization and exclusion, which are ubiquitous in 2013). We can easily draw parallels to indebted cities, which, more- Manila. The marginalization of space for pedestrians, the lack of over, do not have the financial authority to impose taxes (with few public squares and parks, the pollution of the environment which exceptions like the local governments in Switzerland), and thus are hits the poor the hardest, the comparable lack of public housing dependent on regional and national governments. projects,6 among others, run counter to the very idea of the city The political self-organization of the city by its inhabitants is as a place, where its inhabitants shape the world according to thus severely challenged by the power of wealthy individuals, fami- their desires. Where spaces are created against all odds (the lack lies or corporations—domestic or international—to shape the city of urban planning, the privatization of spaces, pollution, and many according to their wants and needs. The question ofwhose desires more), marginalized citizens have developed ingenious ways of are materialized in contemporary cities has thus increasingly be “creating the city” in common (Kaelin 2007, 215–26). 50 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 51

What makes this struggle over the city all the more important setting. The German sociologist Hans-Paul Bahrdt defines a city is the significance of migration for the shape of the city. Doug paradigmatically as a settlement, in which all life tends to take Saunders has coined the term “arrival city” in order to describe place either in the social state of public or in privacy. The degree the phenomenon of urbanization that has created large urban of urbanity, according to Bahrdt, might even be derived from this regions around the world. He expects the twenty-first century to polarity (as quoted in Häußermann, Läpple, and Siebel 2008, 301). be the historical period characterized by human beings becoming This polarity between the public and the private can be described an entirely urban species. By the end of the century, two to three in the following four dimensions: (1) Functional: The public spaces billion people, i.e., roughly one-third of world’s population, will of streets and squares serve as venues for market and politics; have moved to the city and become city dwellers (Saunders 2010, the private spaces of house and company are responsible for the 1). “Arrival city” thus pertains to the change in the social fabric that economic production and human reproduction of society. (2) Legal: accompanies this urban migration in terms of family structure, Different legal regimes are in place in private and public spaces— behavioral patterns, and lifestyles. Starting with the need to accom- streets and squares are regulated by public law, house and factory modate the new migrants in the cities, this migration continually by private law. (3) Social: The public space is the area of stylized transforms the shape of cities. The settlements are often created self-portrayal—only a small part of the personal life is made visible by these migrants at the city-margins, where they take possession for others. The typical encounter in the public realm takes place of previously sparsely populated areas. Cities have for a long time among strangers; private life, in contrast, allows for sharing more been created, produced, and transformed by migrants from rural of the personal life among family and friends. (4) Symbolic: Many areas. Looking for better opportunities and a different form of life, different architectural and urbanistic features signal openness and these migrants attempt to shape their (part of the) city according closeness, exclusivity and accessibility (Häußermann, Läpple, and to their desires. An important challenge for any urban society is its Siebel, 301). ability to integrate these new arrivals. Whereas this sketch of the polarity between private and public Metro Manila is no exception to this narrative of an urbaniza- gives insights about a central aspect of urban life, it is important tion push and the need to accommodate migrants from the prov- to remember the historical contingency of the concrete form of inces. Not only is the population of Metro Manila increasing at a this polarity: Factories can only be inappropriately understood as fast pace, but the nearby provinces of Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite merely private realms of production, markets might be increas- and Laguna are also now becoming subject to the urban expansion ingly taking place in enclosed private areas (like shopping malls), of Manila. This means that not only the desires (however distorted) and social media are situated in a grey area between private and of the long-established city-dwellers give shape to the city, but new public. This occasional indetermination in said examples, however, arriving migrants who settle at the city’s margin also mold the city does not disqualify the general polarity between private and public. as well. This serves as a reminder of the ever-changing nature of Rather, it indicates that a detailed analysis is needed in order to the challenge of forming the city. better understand the private-public polarity in the respective concrete situation. But in turning to the concrete question of the The Role of the Public in the Democratic Politics private/public in the urban landscape of Manila, it is important The city as a venue of an economic, political, and social eman- to understand the political relevance of the public for democracy. cipation is inseparably tied to the polarity of the private and Following John Dewey (1927/2012) Hannah Arendt (1958/1998) the public. As pointed out above, the proximity of strangers in and Jürgen Habermas (1961/1991), discussions in political philos- everyday city-life necessitates a clear distinction between private ophy on the operation and legitimacy of democracy have focused and public; a separation that is less pronounced in the rural on the role and form of the public (or public sphere). In different 52 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 53 ways, all three philosophers (and many that followed in their foot- (or not to do so). Third, this makes the public dependent on the steps) understood the public as a crucial institution for the working human capacities of not only recognizing consequences that affect of modern democracy. They all explain the public by reference to a us, but also to find adequate means to counter and regulate these theoretical (Dewey) or historical (Arendt, Habermas) original situa- consequences. Looking at some of the most pressing issues on tion, which explains the political significance of the public (sphere) a global scale such as climate change, financial regulation, and for political self-organization. These approaches focus on the transnational migration, this is by no means self-evident. Political communicative infrastructure necessary for democracy, yet we can challenges in the city, in contrast, are often more tangible, as we draw consequences for the relevance of public spaces in the city. experience some of the negative consequences of collaboration The public, in Dewey’s account, is not necessarily only an urban (like pollution, disadvantageous city planning, safety and secu- phenomenon. He points out, however, that publics do not exist rity concerns, etc.) on a daily basis. Fourth, such an account of in villages with close (kinship) ties and social control (2012, 62). the public stresses the importance of knowledge and education Instead, publics only emerge where people are affected by the indi- for the ability to recognize indirect consequences of transactions rect consequences of transactions of others. As long as the conse- and the power to an appropriate attempt for regulation. Finally, quences of any transaction only affect the (two) people engaging Dewey understands the state, the government, representatives, in the transaction, such transaction is deemed private. But if such and officials deriving from the internal differentiation of the public. a transaction affects people in an indirect way, they form a public Specifically, the more complex a public gets, the more difficult the and seek to influence its outcome by encouragement, regulation, intended regulations become. For a community not to be perma- or prohibition. Therefore, “[t]he public consists of all those who nently engaged in discussion and problem-solving of indirect conse- are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such quences of cooperation, therefore, it will need to elect officials and an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences come up with some form of government. For Dewey, government is systematically cared for” (48). As long as the sale of say, a loaf of nothing more than the public plus elected officials (58). bread only affects the baker and his customer, that does not create The public—to conclude these reflections on Dewey—is thus a a public. But if it turns out that he overcharges or uses unhealthy feature emerging in larger settlements, where people are not only ingredients, a public might be generated that aims at regulating dependent on each other, but also are indirectly affected by the maybe not only this bakery, but bakeries in general.7 actions of others. The public is not so much understood in terms of A number of aspects should be noted in Dewey’s conceptual- the symbolic fabric of cities or the functional differences between ization of the public. First, publics are not free-floating commu- market and household etc., but is entangled with all important nicative networks but problem-oriented associations of individuals aspects of life that needs problem-solving beyond the immediate aimed at influencing social cooperation. Being subject to the indi- transaction partners. Yet, the free flow and accessibility of informa- rect cooperation of others creates a public. Given the interdepend- tion is required in order for such a public to fulfill its regulatory ence of city-life, we can easily see that publics emerge more often function. People need to be aware of consequences of cooperation; in cities and are a necessary requirement to address the indirect they need to have places where they can meet and exchange their consequences of cooperation. Second, the border between private ideas and learn about issues that affect their lives. Such places are and public is not fixed, but dependent on the perception of the called public places. In large society, mass media are required to consequences of actions. Different societies might perceive different fulfill the function of the ever-increasing circulation of information problems and deem them worthy of regulation. We cannot iden- about indirect consequences of cooperation that affect our lives. tify issues that should be part of public discussion independent of And an increasing challenge for the public is to acquire this infor- concrete communities and their way of framing issues as problems mation. For the purpose of this article with its focus on the city, it 54 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 55 is noteworthy to point out the importance of spaces where people perspective on the polarity of private and public through the lenses affected by indirect consequences of cooperation can come together of Hannah Arendt. and look for joint solutions for these problems. In the next part, we Just as Arendt has identified an ideal age of the public sphere, will see the problems following from a lack of such encounters. namely, that of Ancient Greece, so did Jürgen Habermas, who ideal- While Dewey situates its birth in concrete problem-solving situ- ized the liberal age of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century as ations of people indirectly affected by other people’s cooperation, the time during which the public sphere in its purest form existed. Hannah Arendt traces the public sphere back to a particular form Salons, coffee houses, and table societies served as venues for an of life as paradigmatically embodied by the Ancient Greeks. This affluent bourgeois class to come together and discuss matters of life is shaped by the polarity of household and city with entirely first literary, and later, political relevance. According to Habermas, different functions. Life in the polis, the city, takes place among “The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the free and equal citizens that strive for excellence. This excellence, sphere of private people coming together as a public” (Habermas in turn, is aimed toward a kind of immortality that has no need to 1991, 27). Situated in the age of political absolutism, yet within worry about the (economic) necessity of life Life in the household, idea-historic enlightenment, these gatherings soon turned against the oikos, in contrast, is dominated by the strict hierarchy and public authorities. What was significant about these publics are the basic inequality between the paterfamilias, the rest of the family, norms that guided their discussions. It was not wealth, ancestry, or and slaves. The male figurehead in eachoikos enjoys absolute rule. social position that was essential for the validity of a contribution, The household is the realm of the economic necessity, the realm of but rather their plausibility and rationality. Power was not exerted bondage. The contrast could not be any stronger: The public realm from any member in an authoritarian way. Rather, the emancipa- of the polis is the realm of freedom and equality; in the bright- tory function of these gatherings consisted in the dissolution of ness of the public, citizens strive for excellence, they cultivate authority through reason altogether—“veritas non auctoritas facit their talents, and treat each other as equals. The private realm of legem (truth not authority makes the law)” (53). the household, in contrast, is the realm of economic necessity, of There is no doubt about the exclusivity of these early forms of the bondage, of basic and inextricable inequality (Arendt 1998, 28–78). public sphere. Women, workers, along with anyone lacking wealth Becoming human meant, in Ancient Greece, therefore to excel in and education—i.e., the vast majority of the people at the time— the public sphere of the polis. were excluded from these elitist publics. Yet, the norms inherent Such an understanding of the polarity of the private and the in these publics transcended these empirical limits. In principle, public emphasizes the difference of these two realms in terms of anyone regardless of their position in society should have been their different functions. Even the (economic) market as a tradi- able to participate and have their arguments heard. Its inherent tional feature of the public is in Arendt’s polarity restrained to the values of inclusion, equality, and rationality make the public sphere private domain. The stylized interaction in the public is restricted in principle accessible for everyone. The history of the nineteenth to debates about political issues, to the arts and sciences, and and twentieth centuries can then be understood as a continuous the striving for virtue. In an Arendtian perspective, one might struggle for an ever increasing public—by fighting censorship therefore raise the question how such a public can be fostered by and by developing media outlets that reach out to segments of providing the appropriate framework in modern cities. How could the population previously excluded from the public. Habermas’s we translate the Greek agora, which served as a meeting ground narrative, however, interprets this extension of the public sphere for these public activities into today’s cities? And what might be in terms of a history of decline. The “ideal” public with its high the repercussions, if we fail to come up with an urban planning standard of rationality becomes distorted by the transformation that allows for these spaces? These are questions that follow from a of the public sphere. This transformation is brought about by 56 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 57 powerful actors from the economic and political arena, who seek to we talk about a city, what we actually mean are the streets of the influence public discussion and opinion not through rational argu- city; therefore, “Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places ments, but for their own (economic) self-interest. Advertisement, of a city, are its most vital organs” (Jacobs 1961, 29). A safe city, public relations, and a dilution of the private-public boundary all a lively city, a noisy city, etc. is a city, where the streets and side- contribute to deterioration of the public deliberation, which ideally walks are safe, lively, noisy etc. Streets and sidewalks cannot be is conceived in Kantian terms as a public consisting of private citi- judged independently of how they are used. Sidewalks, thus, fulfill zens that mutually enlighten each other. a crucial function for city life. One interesting aspect in this sketch of the Habermasian notion In particular, Jacobs attributes to sidewalks three vital func- of the public consists in its ideal of the physical encounter between tions: They provide safety, contact, and an assimilation of children. a group of private people to discuss issues of common concern by Safety is their most important attribute. Safe streets equal a safe way of rational deliberation. More importantly, there needs to be city. Safety is not first and foremost provided by the police—“the certain venues that allow for these discussion: venues that increas- public peace—the sidewalk and street peace—of cities is not kept ingly are located in mass media as it would be difficult to gather all primarily by the police. . . . It is kept primarily by an intricate, citizens of, for instance, Manila, in a coffee house or table society— almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards which are Habermas’s original venues of the public sphere. Yet, his among the people themselves, and enforced by the people them- tacit assumption is that they share the same language (or language selves” (31). If this complex system of control and mutual trust game) and similar experiences that would allow them to reach a breaks down, then police cannot fix it.8 Jacobs, moreover, identi- consensus on the issues at stake. fies three aspects that are crucial for a safe street and sidewalk and thereby a safe city: first, a clear demarcation between private The Role of Sidewalks and Streets for Public Life and public space; second, people watching the street and thereby The previous section focused on the importance of the public feeling like being “the natural proprietors of the street” (35); third, sphere for the democratic self-governance of any community. Its sidewalk must be used frequently. These three safety requirements emphasis was on the public in terms of a communicative infra- need to be explained and contextualized from the United States of structure of democracy rather than a spatial feature of urban life. the 1960s to Manila in the twenty-first century. Yet, this communicative feature is related to spatial public struc- In regard to the first aspect, the clear separation of private and tures. It is the shared space of the polis that serves as the stage for public spaces, Jacobs targets housing projects that would create the striving for excellence of the Greek citizens (cf. Arendt); it is the semi-public spaces that are not easily visible and accessible, yet coffee houses, clubs and table societies that brought the bourgeois for the lack of visibility more prone to vandalism and crime. It is public together for discussion (cf. Habermas). Lastly, these are the also not clear who “owns” these places and feels responsible for its indirect consequences of cooperation that brings people together safety. The second aspect describes this notion of “ownership” or to solve these problems (cf. Dewey). “proprietor” of the street. Some people feel responsible for what So the question now arises: How do the urban structures of happens on the sidewalk and they have a vital self-interest for today facilitate such public encounters? In a groundbreaking book safety and order; these people are mainly store owners or restau- on American cities first published in 1961, Jane Jacobs attacks what rant managers. If the sidewalks are not safe, people do not dare she identifies as modern city planning, which leads to a withering of to visit their business. The third aspect points to a frequent use of the public character of the city and attempts to create some segre- sidewalks at different times of the day, because it augments the gated suburban form of life in inner cities. Her analysis focuses on observation of others and it makes the street more interesting for the function of streets in general and sidewalks in particular. When onlookers, who might spend time just observing the busy street-life. 58 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 59

But safety is just one aspect of the social function provided bordering on the street or by vehicles right on them. Pedestrians by sidewalks. Another function is that sidewalks provide contact are treated like second-rate citizens, even if they are the vast which, over time and with enough frequency, eventually will majority and even if most motorized travel requires some amount produce trust. It is not the permanently anonymous contacts that of foot walk. Heat, dust, pollution, and noise make life on Manila Jacobs has in mind, but the contact in a city neighborhood that sidewalks often unbearable. While the climatic conditions cannot consists in the exchange of the occasional word with a bartender be changed, other aspects vary in different parts of the city and or shop owner, the nodding to neighbors while walking the dog or largely depend on city planning and the way sidewalks are used. the time shared when watching children play. These encounters The anecdotal comparison between the segregated and policed create a web of trust among strangers, which still respects private subdivision “Xavierville I” and densely constructed and populated affairs, yet allows—for example—to leave the door keys with neigh- “De la Costa Homes I” both in proximity to the renowned Ateneo bors or watch other people’s children. These contacts do not yet, de Manila University in Quezon City might illustrate the applica- however, qualify for a sense of “togetherness” like in a suburban tion of Jacobs to contemporary Manila. Xavierville I, a subdivision or rural setting: “There is no public life here [in Garden cities], in guarded by several armed security personnel and separated from any city sense. There are differing degrees of extended private life” the rest of the city by high fences, radiates a sense of suburban (64). The lack of public life means that there is no public trust in feeling with its lack of city-life. Although the streets are wide and suburban settings; rather, there is only either a choice of “togeth- only with minimal traffic, they are almost always deserted. Judging erness” or nothing. from the private police presence, there are safety concerns among Finally, sidewalks fulfill the function of assimilating children. the population, which can also be gathered from the high walls and Even though playing on the streets is preceded by bad reputation, fences surrounding the compounds and the protection of the indi- as Jacobs writes (74), noting how the streets are not arranged vidual houses. Hardly any children can be seen that would make according to the needs of children, that children are safer when use of the wide streets and the few dangers from traffic that might observed by many people who share a sense of “ownership” over be there. Applying Jacobs’s diagnosis, one can say that that (semi-) the street, people who make sure no extortion or violence happens urban arrangement does not provide a public city life and only among the children. In other words, unsupervised playgrounds offers the alternative of either “togetherness” or nothing. Hardly might be pedagogically valuable, but if they are not in the public surprising, then, that little familiarity with the neighbors exists. focus, children might not be safe there. Moreover, older children De la Costa Homes, by contrast, is a housing project for the find the streets more interesting and adventurous than secluded employees of the nearby Ateneo de Manila University and consists playgrounds. Jacobs thus debunks the fantasy of the moral and of comparably small lots with many one- to two-story houses emotional corruption that children suffer when spending too cramped side-by-side with small lanes only accessible for pedes- much time on the streets (74). trians serving as street system. Surprisingly, it fulfills the function of Looking at Manila of today, this critique of urban planning in city-life outlined by Jacobs: through small shops and eateries, it has the United States during the 1960s can provide us with impor- natural proprietors of the streets, who not only have a vital interest tant insights about the conditions necessary for sidewalk safety. in the peace and order of the streets, but also constantly watch the Important differences consist in the street and sidewalk safety due street. They (and many others) act as “proprietors of the streets.” to increased motorized traffic. Playing on the streets is nowadays The necessary occasional walks to stores and eateries create a web often very dangerous for children; sidewalks are scarce in Manila of acquaintances and the trust needed for a safe public city-life. and seem to be built and respected for what they are only for as Although there is a small playground available, children prefer to long as they have not been appropriated by building constructions play on the streets. Given the watchfulness of the owners of stores 60 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 61 and eateries and other people spending their time watching the to mass-media forms of entertainment. One problematic aspect of streets, there is always attention on the streets, which fulfills the Manila from the perspective of Jacobs is its segregation into small function of providing safety and contact. This, as a result, assim- suburban-like parts. Such segregation is certainly supported by the ilates children. Given the small size of the neighborhood and the organizing principle of its street system. proximity of the inhabitants, questions can be raised whether that neighborhood provides the sense of privacy that characterizes the The Organization Principle of Manila city or whether it is in regard to the aspect of social control akin We can understand the segregation of Manila in many to a rural community. quasi-suburban quarters, squatter areas, and middle-class housing The description of these two neighborhoods gives us not only projects with an analysis of the street system. Richard Sennett information on how city-life and public spaces play out differ- refers to the Egyptian hieroglyph depicting a cross in a circle as ently across Manila. It also points to the fact of a very segregated one of the primordial signs of the city (1990, 46). This indicates city with many suburban-type hermetically-sealed subdivisions two basic and lasting elements of the city: the continuous circle as well as tight squatter areas. When it comes to Manila, Jacobs refers to a closed domain, such as a wall or a square, within which is certainly wrong when she writes that “no normal person can life unfolds. Already the Babylonians and the old Egyptians organ- spend his life in some artificial haven” (36). Everyday life among ized their cities with streets in the right angle, thereby creating a affluent citizens often exists only by hopping from artificial haven grid of streets with plots of land of equal size. It is this organizing to artificial haven without experiencing any of the aspects of city- principle of the grid that serves Sennett for his reflection of the life as described by Jacobs. They hop from subdivision to gated city. And it is this reflection that will be transposed to the urban university campus or office space; or they dine and shop at secured landscape of Manila to complement Jacobs’s diagnosis. malls, and thus minimize the chance encounters to strangers (cf. The grid is a simple, efficient, and rational way of organizing Kaelin 2007, 215). No sense of public life will arise in this context space. In European history, especially after natural catastrophes, that would provide the functions of safety, contact, and children cities have been reconstructed by using a grid system as was the assimilation outlined by Jacobs. They nominally live in the city case with the London after the Great Fire of 1666 or with the without actually living there. Italian city of Noto after the earthquake in 1693. In the nineteenth The diagnosis developed from Jacobs’s idea of the city identi- century, the grid served as the primary way to shape cities in the fies a lack of the private/public separation in Manila. Even if the United States. Sennett understands this organization principle in legal separation is very evident, like in affluent subdivisions, there the new settlements of nineteenth-century America in terms of a is no public life or public sphere in the proper sense springing negation of the existing natural complexity and variety. Nature is from it. Other city areas are too densely populated to allow for a neutralized: “The grid has been used in modern times as a plan private life. Furthermore, the growth of motorized traffic makes that neutralizes the environment” (48). And very much against many streets virtually impractical to provide the vital functions the ancient grid of the Roman military camp, the modern grid of of public life. Manila shares this negative diagnosis—to a bigger the American city was not confined to a certain space but without or lesser extent—with many other contemporary cities. The mix limits. This reflects for Sennett a shortcoming in nineteenth-cen- of business establishments, restaurant and living areas needed to tury American city-planning. His critique of the grid as the urban create a vivid sidewalk life has given way to a segregation of living, organizing principle of nineteenth-century America is directed shopping, and working areas in the city. Sidewalks are generally against the lack of establishing rules and regulation for the place considered too dangerous for assimilating children, and watching of market, church, and school, rather than simply administering a streets and sidewalks for entertainment purposes has given way grid. The administration of the grid hardly took into consideration 62 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 63 preexisting settlements or natural obstacles like hills and rivers. especially true for gated communities and exclusive subdivisions. The previously (practically) uninhabited land could have been Lastly, if these are developed by one real estate company rather structured according to social and/or natural organizing princi- than by a community, then this creates homogeneous communi- ples, yet the planners “were not so minded. Instead, they aggressed ties with very similar income and demographics. Suburbs, thus, against the environment; their victories lay in neutralizing it” (53). from the very way they are organized, lack the public space and That might well be true. Additionally, the complaints from public life characteristic for city life. attentive observers like Alexis de Tocqueville point to the “soulless” The consequences of that segregation of society can be studied nature of the newly constructed American cities. But what a grid excellently in Manila. With heightened want for security and a also expresses is an ultimately egalitarian and democratic mindset. portrayal and experience of the outside world as dangerous and Social hierarchies are not mirrored or expressed in the organiza- chaotic, (public) life is internalized and privatized. The opposition tion of the city. Authority is not bestowed upon a certain place of chaotic outside world and inner harmony can be drawn upon within the city as such but rather, as Sennett would write, “grids imagination from Chinese, Spanish, and American heritage, as would organize power precisely by stripping away the character Peter Murphy and Trevor Hogan point out (2012). Chinese culture of a place” (51). The lack of places of authority within the urban has a preference for the hidden garden and home in its opposition landscape of grid-like organized cities might be criticized as lack to the chaotic street, and thereby is a long-standing cultural influ- of planning, or praised as inherently democratic. Without dispute, ence in the Philippines. The Spanish colonizers fortified Manila. It too, is the aspect of practicality of the grid system, as it in fact is also of interest that “the symbolic center of Spanish rule in the allows the inhabitant easy orientation even in places he has not Philippines was not a great plaza but the Intramuros—the historic been before and it provides the shortest possible way from A to B. walled city of Manila, where the public sphere was sealed off in The critique of the grid-system by Sennett points to its lack of a stone container” (15). This model emphasized the difference center, its ignorance of natural conditions, its oblivion of previous between an orderly and calm inside and a chaotic and dangerous settlements, and the lack of city planning beyond administrating outside; being inside was good, outside bad. Even though the a rigorous and systematic street system. When compared to the period of American colonialization in the first half of the twen- development of suburbs, subdivision, and gated community, an tieth century was a success in some regards—creating the basis evaluation of a grid as an organizing principle for the entire city for a public infrastructure by building roads, railways and harbors, takes a different form. The development of the past decades in putting in place a general education system, promoting public Europe and North America has seen the rise of suburbs as domi- health, and laying the ground for democratic self-governance (18), nant middle-class form of living. Suburbs can be characterized it was nevertheless also a failure in other regards, because it did according to a number of different features. First, residential not manage to bring about civic order. Being rather in line with the and commercial activities are normally separated, so that stores American presence in military bases and diplomatic residences, catering to daily needs are usually not within walking distance. the inside/outside dichotomy was reinforced. In the discussion of Jacobs, we have seen the importance of this It is against this historic background that the present urban proximity for public life. Second, the daily (and other) needs are landscape of Manila, with its peculiar inversion of private/public, supplied by shopping malls rather than the “usual” downtown has to be interpreted. Murphy and Hogan interpret the city’s shops. Third, the street system is no longer organized in a grid, development in the last century in terms of a “new encomienda” but rather follows a hierarchy. The prevalence of cars, the separa- system (23). That much of the city-planning and construction was tion of work and life, and an increased want for safety and exclu- done by wealthy families constructing their own “cities” within sivity bring about a street system that caters to these needs. This is the city means that within these cities there might be something 64 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 65 as carefully constructed “public lives,” yet heavily homogenized If we take seriously the idea that all politics is rooted in their and thereby excluding “others.” It also means that these “cities” local conditions, we can evaluate different aspects of the urban are sealed against the outside world of the larger city. And most landscape in Manila from that vantage point. We can also see how importantly, as essentially private ventures, these cities lack the important public spaces are for political self-organization. One important aspect of the city as democratic self-organization and problematic aspect of the urban landscape is the segmentation forming the world according to the “heart’s desires.” These privately into different areas with no shared public space for interaction. constructed and managed cities fall short of the emphatic notion Problems affecting different segregated communities cannot be of political and social emancipation as understood by Max Weber. discussed or even solved in common, because there is no public As private enterprises, citizens do not get to politically decide on space where people habitually meet and interact. The public func- their urban environment. In regard to the social aspect, the public tion of sidewalks according to Jacobs is not only to build safety life that provides safety and contact is hardly realized in many through mutual trust, but also to have habitual contact that might affluent quarters judging from the private security forces and the be used to address matters of concern for the neighborhood. If lack of the use of streets. Constructing “cities” as private enterprises that sense of public does not arise, then the essential trust and means that they did not follow the democratic principle of a “grid” habitual contact is missing, and so is the problem-solving ability as a street system, but rather require few (or even only one) access of a community. This might be true within certain neighborhoods street(s) and a hierarchy of different locations within the “city.” in Metro Manila: I have argued above in my comparison of the The outside, in contrast, is left for the barely organized chaos of subdivision Xavierville I in Quezon City and De la Costa Homes in the city outside of “cities.” That outside is largely characterized by Marikina City (both situated near the Ateneo de Manila University) areas of traffic, squatter areas on wasteland, and the omnipresent that only the latter is successful in producing a public life that billboards catering to commuters—not exactly nice to look at, as a ensures safety and builds trust. The lack of trust is certainly evident famous advertiser once put it: “As a private person, I have a passion across neighborhoods; the lack of public spaces and public trust for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. results in fortress architecture and extreme security measures. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects The vast area of Metro Manila, which consists of different cities a billboard” (Ogilvy, quoted in Klein 2009, 3). makes it difficult to come up with a single analysis. In many parts of Manila, city development in the hands of private families has Struggling for Public Spaces for Political Self-Organization created “cities” within the city that exclude important areas of These various observations on the theory of the public sphere Metro Manila factually from citizens’ political self-organization. and some urban phenomena in Manila have shown the importance Such private city-planning might try to artificially create a “public of a functioning public life and public spaces for city life and political life.” Yet, if such a public life comes into existence, it is a highly organization. The city has been presented as a paradigmatic venue homogenized one, that is orchestrated top-down rather than an of individual emancipation—economically, socially, and politically. outflow of the genuine self-organization of citizens. Private city-de- Furthermore, it is the place where the natural environment has velopers, furthermore, are not interested in politically active citi- been reshaped to suit human needs and desires. That reshaping, zens, but rather in wealthy consumers. They create their internal however, requires a collective effort and problem-solving processes public space according to consumer rather than citizen impera- that can only take place in public. It also requires public space, tives; the interests of private city-developers are good consumers where discussion can take place about the social joint-venture that and not good citizens. In a Weberian framework, these privately a city is. Without the public life and without the trust among citi- developed “cities” provide the economic emancipation of the bour- zens, unfortunately, that discussion is difficult to take place. geois, but not the political one of the citizen.9 66 Struggling for Public Spaces LUKAS KAELIN 67

Thus, the fragmented larger city of Metro Manila lacks public —as the leftist slogan goes: “We do not want to have a larger slice of the spaces that would provide the basis needed for public life, public cake, we want to own the bakery.” 8. Jacobs writes on page 32: “No amount of police can enforce civilization trust, and the public organization of Manila. Yet, the history of where the normal, casual enforcement of it has broken down.” Manila has shown that at crucial times throughout Philippine 9. This shows, by analogy, a major problem in the transposition of public de- history, people creating this public space against all odds on the bate from the traditional media of newspaper to social media, especially street can form a powerful public that can successfully challenge Facebook. Facebook is more interested in having consumers use its network for consummation purposes (which creates more revenue) than poli dictatorship and corrupt governments. Unfortunately, these politi- tically active citizens. It will therefore program its website and algorithm in cally successful revolutions have only very partially been translated a way to foster consumerism rather than critically active citizenry. into lasting social transformation. There is still the need for public venues, public places, and a public sphere that would allow for References continuous discussion and the lasting creation of a public life and Anderson, Benedict. 1998. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast public trust. The struggle for public spaces needed for democracy, Asia and the World. London/New York: Verso. Anderson, Perry. 1974. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: New Left thus, is a struggle aiming at a different urban infrastructure that Books. would allow political self-organization and lasting social change. Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dewey, John. 2012. The Public and Its Problems. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Endnotes Habermas, Jürgen. 1991. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 1. “Or were modern architects asked to design spaces that better promote de- Translated by T. Burger. Cambridge: MIT Press. mocracy, they would lay down their pens; there is no modern design equiv- Häußermann, Dieter, Hartmut Läpple, and Walter Siebel. 2008. Stadtpolitik. alent to the ancient assembly” (Sennett 1990, xi). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 2. I am grateful for the comments made by my brother, Benjamin Kaelin, on Harvey, David and Lara Chatterjee. 1974. “Absolute Rent and the Structuring this text in general and on the normative evaluation of this emancipation/ of Space by Governmental and Financial Institutions.” Antipode 6 (1) April: transformation process from rural to urban life. 22–36. 3. This might happen simply because of the rapid growth of the city. What was Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel Cities: From The Right to the City to the Urban Revolu- well-planned and organized for a city of, say, 2 million people in terms of tion. London: Verso. streets, recreation areas, means of transport, no longer can accommodate Imhof, Kurt. 2011. Die Krise der Öffentlichkeit. Frankfurt: Campus. the needs of, say, 14 million people. Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vin- 4. Manchester in the nineteenth century has not been formed according to tage Books. the wishes and needs of the working class, as Benjamin Kaelin (personal Kaelin, Lukas. 2007. Around Manila on Foot: Hardt and Negri on the Commons. communication) laconically points out. Budhi XI (1): 215–26. 5. Murphy and Hogan write: “The Ayala family turned city building into a fam- Klein, Naomi. 2009. No Logo. New York: Picador. ily enterprise” (2012, 23). Marx, Karl. 1887. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Retrieved 6. There could be sensible debate about the role that the city government from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Cap- should play in providing housing for its citizens. The city of Vienna with its ital-Volume-I.pdf. big share of government housing—one third of the 1.8 million inhabitants Murphy, Peter and Trevor Hogan. 2012. “Discordant Order: Manila’s Neo-Patri- of Vienna live in government housing—was successful in creating a good monial Urbanism.” Thesis Eleven 112 (1): 10–34. mix of different social classes throughout the city and thereby avoiding Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ghettos, slums or suburbs with increased criminality. Saunders, Doug. 2010. Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is 7. Where the need of regulation arises is, in Dewey’s pragmatic approach, left Reshaping our World. London: William Heinemann. to the respective public identifying problems and seeking to regulate them. Sennett, Richard. 1990. The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of This need for regulation might lead as far as to a state-controlled economy Cities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 68 Struggling for Public Spaces

FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA Simmel, Georg. 1903. Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben. In Die Grossstadt, edited by T. Petermann. Vol. 9, Dresden. Retrieved from http://gutenberg. spiegel.de/buch/die-grossstadte-und-das-geistesleben-7738/1. Streeck, Wolfgang. 2013. Gekaufte Zeit. Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Weber, Max. 1972. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Sacral Spaces Soziologie. 5th ed. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Between Skyscrapers

AS A METROPOLIS GROWS, it soon absorbs once-independent suburbs, be these small towns or sizeable cities. By “suburbs,” I mean settlements adjacent to a city where people reside and work, but are dependent upon the city. Though the cities1 that have sprung up around Manila are now economically and politically independent of Manila, in one one sense they are still dependent upon it. Before the rest of the country and indeed of the world, their identity is connected with Manila, being collectively called “Metro Manila.” Years back, informal boundaries may have opened between such settlements—a stretch of fields or a river running through—without government decree. However, as suburban cities (like Makati) themselves expand to their administrative boundaries as defined by the national governnment, the visible boundaries between Metropolitan Manila’s political units have disappeared. Instead, one shapeless sprawl is in place. Contributing to the sameness is the upsurge of skyscrapers. While these may be needed because of the scarcity of land, often efficiency seems to be their sole objective. Unfortunately, although their residents may indeed pay many of their taxes locally, mentally and spatially they live in enclaves with no connection to the surrounding city. But why should it matter that the identity of each town or city be retained? Moreover, how can a municipality affirm its identity in a context where the metropolitan cityscape has become one

69 70 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 71 indistinct blur of more and more concrete buildings, whether low However, even as the metropolitan region became one contin- rise or high rise? uous sprawl, some municipal governments in the 1990s (and This essay will show that the historic core of particular thereafter) began to commission the composition of local anthems Philippine towns and cities, namely the plaza and its immediately that would be played at flag ceremonies. Examples are Makati surrounding neighborhood, are spaces that can create a strong and Marikina whose anthems extol the glories of each city. Most sense of municipal identity if local decision-makers paid more municipalities also set aside a day to commemorate the founda- attention to it. It is here that local history, social solidarity, unique tion of the municipality. It also became the fashion to project an customs, and expressions of creativity come together to form a icon that would represent the municipality before residents and sense of “place” in the sense used by Doreen Massey (2005, 151–52), outsiders. For Marikina, as the center of the shoe-making industry, geographer. it was the shoe. For Pateros, the duck and balut, since until recently The limitations of this essay are that, as an outsider, I refer to duck-raising was its specialty. Municipal museums also sprang elements that give particular plazas their specific identity. Research generally located near the main plaza. These initiatives form part needs to be done on how residents themselves feel about their of a nationwide trend to highlight local identity in the form of local plaza. Moreover, I cite only their potential use in the drive to differ- anthems and museums. In Metro Manila, such innovations could entiate their city from other cities. How such potential is actually affirm local identity amid the spreading sprawl. being used by officials and ordinary citizens needs further study. However, municipal governments are understandably torn Why should it matter that a municipality affirm its own identity between affirming local identity and aspiring to a “global image,” and that it should even defend a sense of “place”? namely as a city that is competitive in the global, market-driven economy. A popular icon of globalization is the skyscraper. Tellingly, Affirming Local Identity Makati’s logo features skyscrapers against a sunrise. The truth, of Before the 1970s, there was no Metropolitan Manila; indeed, course, is that there is no incompatibility between affirming local there was only Manila. To the north were the municipalities of identity and aspiring to a global status. New York City, paradigm Navotas, Malabon, Caloocan, and Quezon City; to the east Pasig; of the global city, has indeed vast blocks of high-rises. However, it to the south, Pateros, Makati, Pasay, and Parañaque. Often the conserves neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village where build- boundaries between these consisted of wide gaps such as stretches ings, as low as four stories, still abound. At the core of this neigh- of fishponds between Malabon and Quezon City, or bamboo borhood is a plaza—Washington Square. Is this low-rise neighbor- groves between Pasay and Makati. As populations grew, these hood inimical to New York City’s global image? On the contrary, boundaries disappeared. Today, travelling through the circumfer- it is one of the city’s major attractions because it has been at the ential road called Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (or EDSA as it center of many globally important cultural movements and is is popularly called), the casual visitor would never know that he among the most expensive neighborhoods. Moreover, the median is passing through a ring of cities—Pasay, Makati, Mandaluyong, rent in 2016 was USD 2,204—double that of the city as a whole, Quezon City—each with its own charter, governmental structure, which was at USD 1,235 (City-data.com, np). and taxing authority. As the metropolitan area grew, it absorbed While local city officials want more high-rises as icons of globali- municipalities that before the 1970s, seemed (at least to the Manila zation and as lucrative sources of revenue, their constituents may resident) “provincial and far away,” such as Las Piñas, Taguig, desire other ends such as livability, social solidarity, and creativity. Marikina, and Valenzuela. Again, the seemingly “natural,” informal One example is Greenwich Village where world-famous celebrities boundaries disappeared as the road led from rows of nondescript want to live. Another is the expensive, gated community Bel-Air, buildings to more of the same. which abuts the Makati población (municipal center). Organized in 72 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 73 the 1970s by the Ayala Corporation as one of several gated commu- Anthony Smith (1990), expert on the genesis of nationalism, nities in Makati, Bel-Air, like the rest, follows an American model: argued that it may be too soon to speak of a global culture. People self-enclosed with its own church and playground, it provides safety continue to relate to their national culture because there are while denying its connection to the rest of the municipality. This is memories and symbols connected with national culture which a low-rise neighborhood where villas, surrounded by gardens, are are lacking in its global counterpart. Following his and Massey’s homes to executives in globally-connected corporations. It seems, logic, we argue that assertions of municipal identity originate in therefore, to be the ideal. As a matter of fact, however, it was found collective memories of significant events and places that only wanting. In 1993, the wealthy residents invented a now yearly fiesta local residents can relish. While developing an identity on both called “Pasinaya” for either the last week of April or the first week the national and global planes is important, local identity does of May. Streets were decorated, shows were organized for the chil- matter, too. At issue is not an “either-or,” but rather a “both-and.” dren and for domestic help, and horses pulling traditional calesas Phenomenologically, human beings are embodied consciousness. (rigs) were paraded. The traditional Filipino fiesta, still alive in We know and experience the world through our bodies. At the nearby but poor and congested barangays like Poblacion, was same time we develop interpersonal relationships within circuits consciously emulated by wealthy Bel-Air. of relationships that transcend the immediate (Low 2014). Our Writing of global cities, the geographer Doreen Massey (2005, town or even just our neighborhood is often more meaningful to 59) says that space is active. It is “exhilarating and threatening . . . us than the nation because we have experienced these entities because it [is] unfurnished and always becoming.” Stories contin- directly and physically. In contrast, the nation seems a remote ually occur within space because space is about social relations. and abstract Universal, to use a Hegelian term.2 Even the city, It is about being human. But planners and city officials are liable though more immediately felt, seems abstract. It is a proximate to regard time (speed, efficiency, connectivity) as more important Universal. It is in places, like the plaza, that the Universal becomes than space, which they imagine to be an empty entity that can be immediate. Here we move outside the sphere of the kin group, the manipulated at will. Hence, according to Massey, we must always Particular, to meet friends and even strangers. Here too via monu- ask which sector benefits when local spaces are regarded as manip- ments, museums, and historical writings, we are introduced to a ulable entities. In affirming the local, “place” also matters, for it is wider and more Universal Space, the City and to a Time beyond the weaving together of those stories that, in various ways, locate the present, History. a place as distinct (Massey 2005, 130 and 141). Unfortunately, space Assertions of municipal identity matter for other reasons. and place are denied because of the obsession with actualizing a Local governments in the Philippines, according to the Local particular form of time dominant in global discourse: time visual- Government Code (1991), now have the right to raise their own ized as a highway speeding toward a never-ending progress that revenues through taxing powers, and need not rely on the central will supposedly benefit all. The truth is that such a notion of time government for their income. But even the city may be too abstract may benefit a powerful few, while at the same time blotting out for many of its residents. From my experience in two settings, urban particular time-spaces which have their own stories (82). Massey districts and rural villages, what many connect to is the neighbor- does not advocate shunning the global, for the specificity of a place hood. However, for the city to operate well, its inhabitants should may in fact connect it with other places beyond on other sites on identify with it as a whole rather than with just their cluster of the globe (Massey 1994, 156). Greenwich Village’s specificity, for streets. Will more shopping malls foster a city identity? Still, such example, derives from the local expressions of artistic creativity malls are privately-owned spaces where the visitor must spend within it as well as from its connectedness to currents from other money in order to enjoy its facilities. Often, these deterritorialized cities. spaces form part of a nationwide chain that are not reflective of 74 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 75 local identity and do not stimulate local economic interests. In The Philippine plaza has also been studied by Donn Hart contrast, the plaza, whether on the level of the municipality or a (1955) as an institutionalized social space and recently, by Paulo barangay, is truly a public space. Alcazaren, an architect and landscape planner, in newspaper articles,6 as a space with varied forms and degrees of aesthetic Public Open Spaces attractiveness. Here we examine the plaza as a configuration of During the Renaissance, Roman ideals of city planning were local history, social solidarity, unique practices, and creativity as a revived, among them the public square and the streets laid out on a counterpoint to the tendency to reduce all meaning to an abstract grid (Chanfon 1997). This was a major innovation both in continental one-size-fits-all vision of Progress. Europe and in the Spanish empire which included the Philippines.3 Meanwhile, Setha Low (1999), urban anthropologist, classifies Hitherto, European cities were warrens of twisting streets, with cities according to their particular focus. My concern in this essay limited open spaces (Marías 1999, 394–95). In the Philippines, until connects with two of her foci: “contested” and “sacred.” “Sacred” 1565, north of the Sultanate of Sulu, there appears to have been no because historic urban spaces encourage in a dramatic way cities, but only villages, according to the urban geographer Robert expressions of local identity and solidarity. “Contested” because Reed (1978, 6). Thebarangay was the basic political unit. It consisted the multiplication of high-rises, with little government regulation, of a local chief, his relatives, and their followers, whose attach- encroaches on the historic core of municipalities. The contesta- ment was based on varying degrees of indebtedness (Plasencia tion takes place in the form of two tensions: 1) between the local [1595b] 1910, 471; Morga [1609] 1910, 191).4 The space that gave the and the global, and 2) between the local and the national. Offices village unity was the chief ’s house where community rituals were in these high-rises have few exchanges with the immediately performed (Plasencia [1589], 185–86). Because these settlements surrounding local community. Their very design concedes little to were based on extended kinship ties, I would consider such gath- the local environment: they are self-enclosed, flat-roofed towers, ering places as private rather than public. In Manila and Cebu, the dependent on artificial ventilation, and lately with glass walls that barangay was evolving toward a true city in the structural sense used generate heat. Theirs is an architecture of Nowhere. Their clien- by geographers, sociologists, and anthropologists that I mentioned tele, a mixture of Filipinos and foreigners, are outsiders to the above. Reed, in addition, coined the term “suprabarangay” (1978, 3). community, and as such are more interested in national or foreign Because Manila’s ruler was a Moslem, we may assume that there issues. Proliferating shopping malls also contest the plaza. Local was a mosque which would have constituted true public space tran- governments like these privately-owned entities because the latter scending kin affiliation. Cebu’s ruler was not a Moslem, hence public take over the task of development while remitting taxes. However, space would have been his dwelling. For purposes of conversion, because of their high rental fees, local businesses are excluded. the Catholic missionaries brought together dispersed barangays Nationwide and international brands are instead featured. The into nucleated settlements. At the core of these settlements was terms “transnational spaces” or “deterritorialized spaces” by Low the plaza (40, 42). Around these public buildings stood the church, and Zuñiga (2003, 25) are thereby apt. the municipal hall, as well as privately-owned houses. For centuries Over the past half-century, plans of local governments for down to the present, the plaza has been that space where residents, urban spaces have been dominated by the American myth which regardless of kinship, social class, age or sex met, though this be at extols that living in suburbs, which are in turn interconnected arm’s length, on special days and at public celebrations.5 That the with each other by freeways, are better than living in compact plaza has been and continues to be contested by various interest cities with communal open spaces. But the sprawl model has groups indicates that it is “genuinely public rather than the exclusive produced isolation, expensive infrastructure, dependency on oil, domain of a private group” (Massey 2005, 153). and less farmlands (Wagner, Box, and Morehead 2013, 200). Some 76 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 77 urban specialists say we should revisit the plaza because it fosters transnational and are the sites of elite subdivisions. Visually, this “convenience and community,” less dependence on energy for has led to medium-rise to high-rise buildings which now form a transport, and “a richer life experience” (200). Fortunately, we have solid phalanx in some districts. Boundaries between these cities the plaza in the Philippines. Here, municipal solidarity expresses and their neighbors tend to be fuzzy because they build up to their itself. Undoubtedly, the medium has been largely religious: annual government-approved boundaries. Nonetheless, there is a historic fiestas such as Christmas dawn masses, the saint’s feast and Holy core where centuries of habitation have “inscribed” meanings Week rituals. But this can be reconfigured to become secular as either in buildings or even in natural formations (Low and Zuñiga well, so as to accommodate those of different beliefs. 2003, 13). With government support, these plazas could be even Emile Durkheim’s classic distinction (1968) between the sacred more affirmative of local identity. Nancy Munn (1996) and Stuart (sacré) and the profane (profane) is relevant. The sacred is that Rockefeller (2010) rightly say that “social space is both a field of which is separate from the everyday world (Durkheim 1968, 65, action and a basis for action” (cited in Low 2014, 35). 584–85), being a time, a place, and a practice that embodies the My study is based on a current research project that my team basic values of a people. The profane, in contrast, is the everyday and I have been doing on the architectural heritage of Metropolitan world. The distinction enabled Durkheim to explain the wellspring Manila since 2010. We did an inventory which I supplemented with of religion in a non-evolutionary way. We can broaden Durkheim’s direct observation, participant observation, key informant inter- idea by arguing that any human group needs communality in views, and archival research. To appreciate how these three plazas vision, values, narrative, and purpose. A municipality needs a locus could foster a sense of place, we shall describe each with attention to serve as a focus. One locus could be the historic center which to the following: 1) historical remembrance 2) expressions of soli- would have a special meaning for the local community. To call darity beyond the kin 3) venue for local customs and practices and this “sacred,” however, may confuse, since “sacred” in the English 4) artistic creativity. Furthermore, space becomes place by inter- language today, is often equated with “religious.” “Sacral” may be weaving “social, economic, ideological, and technological” factors an alternative term. It combines two meanings: 1) sacred and 2) (Low 2014, 35) and the multiplicity of stories (Massey 2005, 130 and the spinal column’s base. The sacrum is a large, thick, triangular 141). By “stories,” I mean structures, customs, and practice in addi- bone that supports the spinal column while articulating with tion to what living people narrate. After all, these human creations the pelvic bone. Without it, our skeleton would not be upright. have tales to tell—that is, if we open our eyes and ears. Like other Analogously, the historic center embodies the narrative of the city Philippine plazas, each is the site for church-related celebrations: or town, while ensuring its continuity. Christmas masses, Holy Week processions, and the yearly fiesta in Our problematique can thus be reframed: how can the plaza honor of the locality’s patron saint. I shall show how these plazas and its surrounding neighborhood (the immediate Universal) interweave the four factors listed above. become “places” that convey the identity of its municipality (proximate Universal)? What are salient examples in Metro Manila of Pasig: Mother River plaza complexes that are “sacral” ? Surveying Pasig’s history, three themes stand out: 1) the central role of the river to which the city gave its name “Pasig”; 2) more so Three Oases than in most Philippine communities, the capital role of women; Let us examine sacral space in the suburban cities of Marikina, and 3) the earliest victory of the 1896 Revolution. Except for the Pasig, and Makati which now form part of Metro Manila. Both first, these themes can be experienced in the historic core. At the cities are among the most built-up parts of the metropolis. They same time, it is in the historic core that a unique cultural practice, have attracted major business companies, whether national or called by some as “Cocina pasigueña,” still takes place. 78 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 79

Pasig’s historic core consists of the seventeenth-century church, capital, was the corridor between the lakeshore towns and Manila, two large plazas, the remnant of what used to be the Pasig River’s and was endowed with open spaces on its western flank. Pasig has arm, the Beaterio, and the nineteenth- to early twentieth-century been one of the more prosperous municipalities in the country. houses in the Pariancillo district. Following independence in 1946, when the Philippines began to According to Luciano Santiago’s reconstruction (1998, 22), Pasig industrialize, an important locus was Pasig where manufacturing dates back to at least 1450. Such was its dynasty’s prestige that plants for processed food, textiles, garments, and pharmaceuticals the couple, Dayang Kalangitan and Gat Lontok, founded a lineage appeared. In addition, it became an important commercial and from which Manila received three rulers in succession: Solimans office center, following the expansion of the Ortigas Center, which I, II and III, while Tondo in turn received Lakan Dula. In 1572, the straddled three municipalities: San Juan, Mandaluyong, and Pasig. town became a mission and subsequently a parish administered In turn, these commercial and office developments fuelled the need by the Augustinian friars. Pasig’s very location made it prosperous. for subdivisions that catered to upper income households (such as Extensive rice lands, flooded annually by the waters of Laguna de Valle Verde) and middle income households (such as Kapitolyo) Bay, yielded a rich crop in nearby Taguig. Trade in rice and other (Manuel 2001; Bayana 2001). In 1975, Pasig was pulled out of Rizal commodities between the lakeshore towns and Manila had to pass province and incorporated into a political entity—Metro Manila— through Pasig. Hence, the structures of large stone buildings, civic, after President Ferdinand Marcos created the Metro Manila religious, and domestic, that sprang up in the town, some of which Commission, which was later renamed the Metropolitan Manila survive. Development Authority. In 1994–1995, Pasig was declared a city. Not to mention, Pasig was the eye of the storm in significant From the beginning down to the 1970s, the Bitukang Manok bloody events. Many Manila Chinese revolted against the Spaniards waterway, called such because it resembled a chicken’s intestine, in 1601 and 1639, and during both, they fled to Pasig. An event of connected the town to the Pasig River. Unfortunately only a trickle which Pasigueños are specifically proud is the assault on the colo- now remains because much of it was cemented over, reducing it nial military in the opening days of the 1896 Revolution. On May to a narrow canal. 3–12, 1896, Andres Bonifacio and the leaders of various councils Meanwhile, the important role of women can be felt in the of the Katipunan met in an Asamblea Magna (Great Assembly) at church and in the beaterio in front of it. When Pasig was reorgan- the house of Valentin Cruz, located by the Bitukang Manok River. ized in 1573 as a mission, and eventually as a parish, its titular They agreed that an attack should be launched against the colo- patron was Our Lady of the Visitation. In 1587, Mary continued nizers (Velasquez 2001). On Saturday, August 29, in response to the to be the patroness, but her title was instead changed to the more discovery of the Katipunan by the authorities, 2,000 Katipuneros popular Immaculate Conception. Our Lady of Peace and Good and Pasigueños successfully overwhelmed the town’s government Voyage, a popular, brown-skinned image of Mary, is enshrined at a house and the Spanish garrison (Velasquez 2001). From the town church in the hills of nearby Antipolo. To journey between Manila at they climbed the heavily forested hills to nearby San Juan del Monte the mouth of the Pasig River and Antipolo, she would pass through to resume the fight. “Nagsabado,” indeed, is an important event the Bitukang Manok in several processions during the seventeenth that ought to be commemorated yearly rather than intermittently. to eighteenth centuries. Henceforth, for Manileños, Pasig became In 1901, under the Americans, Pasig became the capital of a new the gateway to the annual May pilgrimage to Antipolo during the province called Rizal which was carved from the previous prov- seventeenth to early twentieth centuries. During the nineteenth inces of Manila and Laguna. A provincial capitol building arose on century, a century after the Conversion, a mystical movement its western highland overlooking the Pasig River. Aside from being appeared among women. One locus was Manila, the other Pasig. the capital of a province, this municipality was close to the national Women who wished to live a life of devotion formed communities 80 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 81 called beaterios, where they took vows of poverty, chastity, and nineteenth century, some of which still stand. A singular house is obedience only when close to death. Witnessing the fervor of native the lightly ochre Guanio House, now the Alfonso Hotel. This was women, Felix Trillo, an Augustinian friar, founded the Beaterio de built in 1881 by Apolonio Santiago y Domingo, at one time the Sta. Rita de Pasig in Pasig in 1740. This, in turn, led to a parochial gobernadorcillo or town mayor. In 1895, this became the Cuartel school for girls. However, in 1883, native Filipina Augustinians, de la Guardia Civil (Headquarters of the Civil Guard). Together who had been recruited by Spanish Augustinian sisters, took over with the now vanished Tribunal de Mestizos, this was besieged on the beaterio and transformed it into the present-day Colegio de August 29, 1896 by revolutionists armed only with “scythes, bolos, Nuestra Señora del Buen Consejo (Santiago1998). To complete the a few firearms” (Velasquez 2001). It was an opening act in the picture, one of the most evocative songs ever composed in the Philippine Revolution of 1896. islands was inspired by the Pasig carnival of 1926. The music was Back at Plaza Rizal, we find the Museo de Pasig in the former composed by Nicanor Abelardo, the lyrics by Deogracias Rosario. mansion built of Don Fortunato Concepción y Cabrera, a busi- Called “Mutyâ ng Pasig,” it eulogizes the spirit (mutyâ) of the waters ness tycoon, in 1937. In 1980, it was acquired by the City of Pasig (de la Paz Osorio 2001), a spirit that assumes the form of a maiden. and turned into the Pasig Library and Museum. This neo-Spanish Pasig’s stone church and belltower was begun in 1575–1591, the structure of reinforced concrete has a grand three-story tower present stone church, the Immaculate Conception Church, mean- with a dramatically projecting balcony. The entire house is while, was most likely constructed before 1639 (Galende 1994). painted a delightful lemon yellow, with columns and ornaments During the British Invasion in 1762, 10,000 native Filipinos dug in a contrasting white. Within the past two decades, town and trenches around the church and convent to face 500 British troops, city museums have sprouted all over the Philippines to foster but were defeated (Tech 1994). The lone tower at the north side of local identity and pride of place. To do so, they must highlight the the church rises quadrilaterally in four stages, and then abruptly unique narratives of their locality. In Pasig‘s case, a unique icon becomes octagonal in the fifth and last. Pairs of plain tuscan columns is the haunting “Mutya ng Pasig.” Unfortunately in 2013, when I frame the church’s lone main door, as well as the large window visited it, the museum had at most a collection of paintings by above. The interior has a unique treasure, the wooden bas-relief local artists on themes that could be found anywhere else. Nothing called “The Virgin of the Apocalypse,” from the eighteenth century. was shown (or heard) that was specific to Pasig. Mary stands with a mantle that drapes over the left shoulder and In front of the museum, people, both young and old, enjoy the unfurls as it falls over. Her hands clasp together in prayer while on sun on the metal chairs of Plaza Rizal, and converse with each her youthful face is a wistful look. Surrounding her are clouds and other under the palm trees and on the red-tiled walks. Here at representations of her attributes. Underneath her feet is a serpent least, unlike in a shopping mall, locals can either renew ties or with a human head. Fernando Zobel de Ayala, painter and art critic develop new ones without needing to pay. (1963) praised this work for its exceptional beauty. In the vicinity of the plaza are two modest eateries where Two plazas open beside the church on the north side and to Pasig’s cocina pasigueña can be sampled. Here local identity is the west. On Plaza Rizal to the west of the church is the surviving asserted creatively. Because of its prosperity, according to conver- neoclassical facade of the former Beaterio de Sta. Rita, founded in sations with a heritage advocate, José Velasquez, Pasig produced 1740. The beaterio chapel was erected sometime during 1799–1824 cooks who were sought after in other towns and developed its (Santiago 1998). own cooking style. Mang Ato’s, an eatery, features a local version The plaza and Calle Burgos, a street that runs alongside it, lead of Chinese noodle dishes: thin rice noodles cooked in broth, and to the Pariancillo where prosperous families of mixed Chinese sprinkled with thinly smashed chicharron, toasted garlic, and and native Filipino ancestry raised their huge mansions in the chopped green onions. A patis-flavor gives itunami . An eatery on 82 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 83 a sidewalk several blocks away from the plaza serves Pasig’s putong Makati which houses exhibits depicting both the prehistory and laksa. Unlike the usual puto or rice cake, this soft cake is spooned the history of the city. Unfortunately the museum’s hours are and eaten with vegetables, such as banana heart turned orange erratic. The neighborhood surrounding the church is picturesque. because of achuete (annatto) juice. This is standard fare among old The mostly all-concrete houses stand cheek-by-jowl along narrow Pasig families on festive occasions. Such unique local creativity, streets that rise and descend because of the hilly terrain. Dramatic clearly, cannot be expressed in a shopping mall with high rentals. streetscapes open as one walks through. The Población is the locale of unique annual rituals and spec- Makati: Street Creativity tacles. For instance, to commemorate Sts. Peter and Paul on their Down to the late 1960s, most of the Makati plateau was an feast day, June 29, young maidens dance with hoops of flowers empty grassland. However, in the 1970s, Makati became the coun- before the Virgen de la Rosa (Our Lady of the Rose). Different try’s financial center, being the address of major local and inter- bands also play during the festivities. national companies. It is also the home of very prestigious gated During Lent, Passion Week, and Holy Week, the Población’s enclaves. Makati’s rise to power was rapid once the Ayalas imple- significance as a unique place, reflective of municipal identity, mented lessons from California suburbs, i.e., by developing not only manifests itself in a unique way. Practices surrounding temporary housing zones, but likewise adjacent zones for business, commerce, chapels, called kalbaryo, flourish on streets all over the Población and worship (Lachica 1984, 141–43). Few appreciate that Makati from Passion Week till Easter Sunday. Temporary chapels, made of has a historic core that dates back to the 1600s and that this core plywood, recycled materials, and a roof made of galvanized iron continues to be the site of local assertions of identity and creativity. sheets spring up on side streets between hotels, office buildings, Until the boom of the 1970s, Makati’s neighborhoods clus- brothels, bars, and in the shadow of the skyscrapers. Kalbaryo liter- tered on a headland along the Pasig River. Let us set aside the ally means “calvary” because scenes from the Passion and Death of Monasterio de Guadalupe, founded by the Augustinians, which Christ are depicted in paintings and sculptures. Each Kalbaryo is dominates the highest cliff of this headland, and focus rather on commissioned by a group of friends as a sign of devotion. Here the the “población,” the core of the local community. Its landmark is a pabasa, or the public chanting of the Passion and Death of Christ, church constructed by the Jesuits in 1620, burnt by Chinese rebels using the old text called Pasyon Henesis, takes place. For instance, in 1639 and reconstructed in 1899 following bombardment by the one club founded in 1947 has 30 members today, who regard each Americans during the Philippine-American War (Javellana 1991, other as kabarkada (groupmates). Many are professionals: archi- 196–97; Co et al. 2006). The church of San Pedro and San Pablo tects, lawyers, or businessmen. To facilitate the chanting of the have a classic baroque façade. A half-moon pediment rises over Pasyon, lasting for seven to eight hours, tables are installed. While the two-story façade of volcanic tuff called adobe, which tapers off the purpose is to pray, the members enjoy socializing with each at both ends into a mild suggestion of a scroll. Inside the church, other and their many guests. But the kalbaryo can stir religious a lavishly carved baroque retablo rises in three stories and houses devotion as well. A member says that he fell into a pond. So severe two beloved icons of Makati: the Sto. Niño de la Pasión and the was the accident that part of his leg skin was stripped almost to Virgen de la Rosa. Traditional celebrations fete these icons. the bone. Although he received proper medical attention at the Makati’s Población does not have as rich or as varied a hospital, on the eve of Holy Week during that particular year, he legacy of cut-stone construction as Pasig would. Other than the felt very ill. However, after he chanted passages from the Pasyon church, there is a dignified 1934 house which used to house the at the kalbaryo, he suddenly felt well. Municipal Government before it moved to its present building The kalbaryo enliven the streets with their naïve art. Essentially on JP Rizal Street. This has been transformed into a Museo de an altar, some memorable kalbaryo in 2012 were actually small 84 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 85 chapels made of plywood and paper. A couple of such chapels in malls, but at the base of a buildings or in the wing of a house. had neoclassical Tuscan columns. The most arresting kalbaryo of Their highly original concepts have attracted habitués from all over 2012 was a huge papier-maché bust of Christ that rose to almost Metro Manila. Their charm is enhanced by the población itself, three meters. The next year, a different design replaced it. In 2012, where streets meander up and down the hill and somehow end in there were approximately 40 kalbaryo, which shows that they have the church plaza. They connect the local with a wider circuit: the been increasing. Their continual re-invention, moreover, suggests city, the nation and the global, for in Makati cluster the country’s a craving for artistic expression. These shrines also connect the top corporations, powerful families, and avant-garde art galleries. members with the larger community rituals: the processions of Holy The población bars and cafes draw their energy from this mixture Wednesday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday pass through several of of currents from within and from other places from outside the these kalbaryo which are all lit up. This 2018, I joined a procession Philippines. It well illustrates Massey’s call for “a global sense of the at midnight on Easter Sunday which brought together the statues local, a global sense of place” (1994, 156). of the Risen Christ and His Mother in a plaza in front of the Museo. A master plan for the Población was commissioned by the It was awesome witnessing a community celebrating together in City of Makati, under Mayor Jejomar Binay, to improve the flow the deep of night. In the morning, the kalbaryo are torn down after of traffic, to connect the cultural sites together, and to make the a motorcade passes by, which throws candies to the children. place more liveable. Conceived by one of the country’s best plan- Skyscrapers are, in the meantime, encroaching on the low-rise ners, Arch. Nathaniel von Einsiedel, the plan was submitted to houses of the Población. Ominously, some residents have sold Jejomar. Unfortunately, it has not yet been implemented by the two their property to high-rise developers. But there are those who are succeeding mayors, both of them Jejomar’s children. determined to stay and live close to their friends. Why live in the crowded Población instead of a tower? Jaime lived in the US for 10 Marikina: Shoeprints by the River years where he practised his profession. Why did he come back? Among the cities of Metro Manila, Marikina stands out for having His father was ill. Besides he found living in the US stressful and consciously conceived a cultural complex to serve as the city’s core. life in the quiet and clean suburbs “malungkot” (sad). But why live This is thanks to former Mayor Bayani Fernando who brought order in the crowded core? Though his father lived in a gated subdivi- into the disorder that typified this, like most other Philippine cities, sion, he preferred to live in their house by a busy main street. Jaime before his term. One outstanding example is his relocation of 10,473 likes the city core because many places are accessible on foot, and informal settlers away from the river banks at the city’s expense, in no car is needed. He says, “I meet people in jeepneys. They see order to free both banks of the river for both recreation and commer- me. Parang magkakilala (It’s as though we know each other). I like cial establishments (Palisoc 1991, 77–78). Rare among Philippine crowdedness. There’s a sense of community.” mayors, he gave importance to building pride of place among the There is another expression of creativity in the Población, residents by developing a comprehensive cultural complex inte- one that is continuous throughout the year. The Población, with grating this riverside park with sites celebrating the city’s main its mixture of houses, apartments, hotels, bars, and brothels has industry. At the same time, he helped the poor and simultaneously spawned imaginative restaurants. “A Toda Madre” is a Tex-Mex fostered a neighborhood spirit by setting up a “Barangay Talyer” in café that offers a fine selcction of tequilas from newly distilled each barangay. Here tools and equipment are stored and can be used to aged. “Tambai” is a witty take-off on the Filipino corner eatery by barangay residents, especially the poor (Palisoc 1991, 79). where teenagers with limited funds hang around (istambay). As an outsider, I see the identity of Marikina connected with “Tilde” offers a wide assortment of pastries. “Poblacion Bar” is two things: water and shoes. This too has been given emphasis by home to Joe’s Brew, a locally crafted beer. These are located not local officials in defining Marikina’s identity. 86 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 87

Water has been central to Marikina’s identity. Manila’s drinking shoe industry which, during most of the twentieth century, was water, during the nineteenth century, came either from cisterns Marikina’s main industry and its face to the world. in houses or from springs in San Juan del Monte, San Mateo, and The first such building is the former one-story storehouse of Marikina (Gonzalez y Fernandez 1878, 456).7 Marikina in Spanish the Hacienda de la Paz. The nineteenth-century building is a single documents is “Mariquina.” It was here that Augustinians opened story made of thick adobe stones. After the Society of Jesus was their first mission in the 1590s (Marikina City 2015). The water suppressed in 1768 in all Catholic domains by Pope Clement XIV of San Mateo River (another name for Marikina River then) was under pressure from the kings of France, Spain, and Portugal, described as having water that was “crystal-clear and health- their lands were put on auction in 1794. Their hacienda covering giving” (un agua cristalina y saludable) (Buzeta 1851, 307). A more Marikina and parts of other adjacent towns was bought by Vicente lasting solution appeared when the Carriedo Waterworks were Dolores Tuason, first-born of Antonio Tuason, a mestizo of Chinese inaugurated in 1881, which drew water from the Marikina River and native Filipino origin, who had made his fabulous fortune in and pumped it up to a deposit in San Juan del Monte from whence the Galleon trade. The Marikina estate was later on called de la Paz, it entered Manila through metal pipes (de Mas 1882, 71–74). after Teresa de la Paz, a native of Marikina. She was the widow of Appropriately, Bayani Fernando used Marikina River as one axis José Severo Tuason, hacienda heir who died in 1874. The successor of the cultural complex he envisioned. He opened a park on both should have been their first-born José Victoriano, but he died on 25 banks of the river where people can stroll. During his term, there January 1878 at the age of thirteen, while on a trip to Germany. As were water-oriented festivals that he commissioned. During the her son’s universal heiress and successor, she took possession of the Christmas season of 2015, long tents were set up to accommodate Hacienda de Mariquina on 1 October 1878 (Santiago 1998c, 345, small shops that sold household goods and clothes. This fostered 353). Since this was a valley with yearly flooding, rice was a major a holiday mood and gave people opportunities to earn money. On crop. Converted into the city’s Shoe Museum, an old adobe-stoned the south bank across was a carnival with a ferris wheel. During storeroom of the hacienda displays samples of Marikina footwear, the rest of the year, Marikina friends tell me that they like to come basic shoe-making equipment used, a limited assortment of foot- to the park to stroll with their family and friends on the grassy wear from all over the world, and Imelda Marcos’s collection of banks. shoes. The museum could also help the flagging shoe industry if it Another axis is Rizal Street, which connects the city’s prin- showcased outstanding Filipino shoe designs over time and fostered cipal church, its plaza, and three sites honoring the shoe industry. research on shoe innovations. At present, it seems more like a big Though the Augustinians began their mission at the close of the display cabinet. Nonetheless, the museum is a start. Hopefully, in seventeenth century, the present church, located on the north the future it will have a better vision. It is also admirable that the bank of the Marikina River, was consecrated in 1791 according to city officials have savvy in choosing this former hacienda store- the historical marker. It is under the advocacy of Nuestra Señora room as the setting of a shoe museum. In it, two major themes in de los Desamparados (Our Lady of the Abandoned). The church Marikina’s history converge: hacienda town and footwear center. has a cruciform footprint, a lantern tower over the crossing and On the same side of the street rises a five story concrete-and- a single side belfry at the main entrance. Though heavily altered glass building that houses the showroom of Gibi, one of Marikina’s in design, there are some elements of its original neo-romanesque best-known shoe brands. The showroom is also a storeroom. style—receding round arches in series and decorative rows of blind The third building in this series of buildings relating to the shoe arches on the belfry walls and pediment.8 In front of church, the industry is separated from Gibi by a small plaza. This was the large plaza is a venue for the city’s celebrations. On the other side residence of Laureano Guevarra, popularly called “Kapitan Moy,” of the main road stand a series of three buildings, honoring the during the years 1851–1871. According to the historical marker, he 88 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 89 founded Marikina’s shoe industry. Wanting to know how to repair A final comparison is this: while all three plazas supposedly his imported shoes, Moy took these apart and reassembled the form the affective core of their cities, perhaps this is really only parts, and shared the knowledge with others. Marikina emerged true of Marikina which has branded itself as the Shoe Capital of as a shoe-making center in 1887. Today, the ground story of this the Philippines and has clustered the emblems of its identity by house houses two restaurants. One restaurant, called “Kusina ni the church plaza. In contrast, especially in Makati, no such clarity Kambal,” specializes in serving Marikina dishes such as the well- of branding has taken place. The city’s old plaza is, at present, the loved “Everlasting”—a large meatloaf consisting of ground pork affective core of the Población, but not of the wealthy barangays mixed with chorizo, hotdogs, strips of bell pepper and carrots, that ring it each of which has its own large parish church. Religious raisins, onions and hard-boiled eggs, steamed in a baking pan. festivals are celebrated enthusiastically in and around the old The sidewalk connecting the three buildings has bronze plates plaza, but there is no clear, all-embracing narrative about Makati in the form of shoes with the names of celebrities who patronize that would attract residents either to it or its environs. Marikina shoes. Toward a Sense of Place Comparisons Why protect local identity as expressed through the municipal Comparing the three plazas, it is Marikina that seems most plaza? self-aware. There is a conscious attempt to remind people of the Progress is inevitable, claims the reigning myth. if we fully importance of the shoe industry by clustering together the Shoe participate in the global market economy. Supposedly there is only Museum, a shoe factory, plaques commemorating the founder of one way—the highway taken by advanced capitalist countries, a the shoe industry and the shoe-shaped sidewalk plaques. On the highway that ignores differences between different worlds on the other hand, a broad sense of solidarity is palpable, not only in globe. A monolithic, uniform conception of time is devastating the Marikina, but in Makati as well. Aside from the long riverside park multiplicities of time-space. A monotonous sameness of appear- in Marikina, there are various annual riverside festivals; in Makati, ance has descended upon Metro Manila. the wayside shrines during Holy Week bring large masses of people However, there are oases of exception that do open up. The who are non-kin together to construct and maintain them during plaza of Marikina stands out for its shoe industry, its water festi- the holy days. Though local customs can be experienced in the vals, and its annual riverside fair; that of Makati for the imagi- three plazas, Pasig (at the time I explored it) did not highlight its native quality of its Lenten shrines and its quirky cafes; and that culinary heritage. The eatery selling its puto was then on a side- of Pasig for the high visibility of women in its traditions and for walk in a side alley. In contrast, Marikina features its cooking in embodying one of the first victories of the Revolution. Social soli- two eateries, one of them a sizeable restaurant located within darity is expressed differentially. In Makati, this is dramatically its cultural complex. In Makati, the temporary wayside shrines shown by the construction of new street shrines every Holy Week flourish and increase in number in preparation for the Holy Week by many associations and the free sharing of food and drink to all processions on Holy Wednesday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. who come for the chanting of the Passion. In Pasig and Marikina, The inventiveness shown in the designs of these yearly reconsti- local food specialties found nowhere else can be bought near tuted structures and in the famous, well-publicized eateries of the the plaza. In Makati, the creativity of bars and cafés has made poblacion make Makati’s plaza complex truly tops in creativity. But the Poblacion a fashionable magnet. Lastly, Marikina’s shoewear the most attractive plaza is that of Pasig with its lordly rows of industry could be revived if the Shoe Museum were to inspire both palm trees in the center and its vistas of museum, antique houses, as a storehouse of designs from the past and as a research center and ancient church. for new styles. 90 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 91

These oases are important for three reasons. In this global age, occupational specialization other than in agriculture, 2) it clusters people one paradox is that on the one hand, a time-space that does not fit into a compact, nucleated settlement, and 3) it is heterogenous for it gathers people of differing social classes, occupations, and even ethnicities. But “city,” the norm of the supposed urban landscape is regarded as a deviant as currently defined by the Philippine state, refers to settlements that meet to be blotted out. But, precisely because it is a deviant, it can also two requirements: 1) a minimum population size and 2) a minimum annu- be seen as an asset because people crave unique experiences, often al revenue (Philippine Statistics Authority, n.d: Republic of the Philippines interconnected with a locality. The business executives who hold 1953). Hence not all municipalities, however urban-like they be, can carry the designation of a “city.” While my basic understanding of what a city is struc- office by day in an transnational company located in a skyscraper tural, when I discuss “suburban cities” I take into account the definition by will, by night, seek eccentric bars in the winding streets of the the Philippine state. Población because such an experience can be found nowhere else. 2. My first Masters was in Philosophy with emphasis on German phenomenol- A second reason is that, particularly with more local autonomy, ogy and on Hegel. The higher abstraction in philosophy helps clarify basic conceptual relations. our municipal officials seek to mobilize their constituents. They 3. This needs qualification. In indigenous Mexico, the Spaniards encountered have tried to foster local identity and solidarity by commissioning public plazas laid out correctly with four corners that were grander, cleaner, anthems, designating foundation days, and opening municipal and safer than what they knew. Mesoamerican ideals of planning may have museums. They could take another step forward by making the influenced the large rectilinear plazas that began to emerge in Spain during plaza attractive because it can combine together history and busi- the late sixteenth century (Wagner, Box, and Morehead 2013, 42). They could have influenced Philippine plazas as well. ness, creativity and livelihood, the quest for religious transcend- 4. The Anonymous Author of the Boxer Codex ([1590] 1960, 357) says that in the ence and mundane pleasures. It could be the spine that keeps their Visayan haop, their equivalent of the barangay, the chief ’s followers were his city together as it moves forward. deudos (relatives). Finally, we all want a home. Our family dwelling is one home. 5. Recently, the accusation is being made that the plaza was introduced to keep watch over colonials. How can this accusation be substantiated? As shown But we need a home where we can share with and meet others who above, the plaza emerged in both the Philippines and Western Europe during are not our kin. Logically, our municipality should be such a home. the sixteenth-century Renaissance as an effort to create better planned ur- But where is one space where the stories of our municipality across ban centers. Indeed, the indigenous Mesoamerican example of monumental generations and across social boundaries interweave and can be plazas may have inspired the Spaniards themselves. Understandably, there is felt in its structures, art, cuisine, rituals, festivals, legends? One ressentiment against Spanish influence because of colonialism. But it would be wrong to suspect malicious motives in their every move. My favorite ex- such space could be the plaza and its environs. We should shift ample: supposedly Spaniards obliged Filipinos to wear their shirt tails out metaphors. The plaza can also be a heart, the center of our affec- and to use translucent materials so as to detect weapons. But where is the tions, for here the indefinite abstract universal space that our city documentary evidence for this? Meanwhile the Chinese and Indians who is becomes a definable concretely felt sacred place like no other. came here to trade wore their shirt tails out; moreover, Indians took pride in wearing muslin which is even more transparent than our piña. Baseless accu- sations keep us from taking pride in many aspects of our heritage, including the plaza. Endnotes 6. Alcazaren has a regular Saturday column in the newspaper Philippine Star 1. Two concepts need clarification. One is “municipality,” the other “city.” The called “City Sense.” From 2016 down to this year 2017, every so often he fea- former refers to the administrative and political units into which a Philippine tures a plaza. I will cite just a few examples: Alcazaren (2016a, 2016b, 2016c). province is divided. While most municipalities are towns, some are recog- 7. The headland and watershed, where the campus of Ateneo de Manila arose nized by the Philippine state as a “city.” Two definitions of “city” are relevant. in the 1950s, yielded springs, for it was then forested. Hence, the street called One is the standard understanding of either “city” or “urban settlement” in “chorrillo,” the Spanish for “water jet,” located close to this headland (“arang- geography, sociology, and anthropology. As defined, for instance by Louis ka” is the Tagalog form of “barranca,” meaning “gully”). Wirth (2002), a city should be understood “structurally,” rather than solely in terms of its population. 1) It brings together people who engage in lifelong 92 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers FERNANDO N. ZIALCITA 93

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Makati: City Government of Makati. de España Menendez Pidal: La cultura del Renacimiento (1480–1580). Vol. 31. De la Paz Osorio, Theresita. 2001. “Myths and Legends.” Pasig 1573–2001: Ang Na- Directed by José María Jover Zamora. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. karaan: Sandigan ng Kinabukasan, 43–44. Pasig City: Araw ng Pasig Founda- Marikina City. 2015. “Marikina’s Historical Development.” http://marikina.gov. tion. ph/v3/#!/history. Accessed November 28, 2015, De Mas y Otzet, Francisco. 1882. Memorias de las obras pías y del agua estudiadas Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Univer- por el insigne Patricio D. Francisco Carriedo y Peredo, crónica de los festejos sity of Minnesota Press. que el exco. Ayuntamiento de la M.N.Y.S.L Ciudad de Manila en unión de su ———. 2005. For Space. London: Sage. vecindario ha celebrado para conmemorar la primer fuente de aguas potables. Munn, Nancy. 1996. “Excluded Spaces: The Figure in the Australian Aboriginal Manila: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Ramirez y Giraudier. Landscape.” Critical Inquiry 22 (3): 446–65 De Morga, Antonio. [1609] 1910. Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. Edited and com- Palisoc, Marilu. 2000. “Improving Local Fiscal Administration through the 1991 mentary by Wenceslao E. Retana. Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Local Government Code: The Case of Marikina City.” Master of Arts thesis, Suárez. Ateneo de Manila University. Durkheim, Emile. 1968. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Paris: Presses Philippine Statistics Authority. N.d. “Philippine Standard Geographic Code Universitaires de France. (PSGC).” http://nap.psa.gov.ph/activestats/psgc/articles/con_cityclass.asp. Accessed July 20, 2018. 94 Sacral Spaces Between Skyscrapers

MICHAEL D. PANTE Plasencia, Juan de. [1589a] 1910. Wrongly dated as 1598. Untitled, 471–75. In the notes of Wenceslao E. Retana, ed. Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas by Antonio de Morga [1609]. Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez, editores. ———. [1589b] 1903–1909. “Relation of the Worship of the Tagalogs, Their Gods, and Their Beliefs and Superstitions.” In The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898. Translated by by Emma Blair and James Robertson, 19: 183–297. Cleveland: Cleaning the Capital Arthur H. Clark. Reed, Robert. 1978. Colonial Manila: The Context of Hispanic Urbanism and Pro- The Campaign against Cabarets and cess of Morphogenesis. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Republic of the Philippines. 1953. “Republic Act No. 2840: An Act Classifying Cockpits in the Prewar Greater Manila Area Chartered Cities Except Manila, Baguio and Quezon City, According to their Annual Revenues and Fixing the Salaries of the Officials Thereof.” Chan -Rob les Virtual Law Library. ww.chanrobles.com/republicacts/republicactno840. html#. Accessed July 20, 2018. Republic of the Philippines. 1991. “The Local Government Code of the Philip- pines,” http://ppp.gov.ph/wp. Accessed July 20, 2014. Introduction Rockerfeller, Stuart Alexander. 2010. Starting from Quirpini: The Travels and Plac- A CITY’S BORDERS do not simply delineate its territorial es of a Bolivian People. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. limits. Whereas the urbanized center, as the main locus of the Santiago, Luciano P. R. 1994. “Mother Sebastiana Salcedo de Sta. Maria (1652– 92): The Mystic of Pasig.” InPasig: Noon, Ngayon at Bukas, 72. Pasig: Araw ng city’s economic infrastructures and political symbolisms, defines Pasig Foundation. the city and makes it recognizable to both residents and non-res- ———. 1998a. “The Beaterio de Santa Rita de Pasig, 1740–1898.” Lungsod ng Pasig: idents, borders provide a haven of sorts to elements of the urban Pinanggalingan, Pinaroroonan, edited by Josefina A. Alvarez, 35–37. Pasig: underside. While boundaries separate contiguous towns from one Araw ng Pasig. ———. 1998b. “The Virgin on the Crescent Moon: A Marian History of Pasig.” In another, they also create corridors of urban activity that are radi- Lungsod ng Pasig: Pinanggalingan, Pinaroroonan, edited by Josefina A. Alva- cally different from those in the center, straddling both sides of rez. Pasig: Araw ng Pasig Foundation. the border. ———. 1998c. “The Last Hacendera: Doña Teresa de la Paz, 1841–1890.”Philip - As early as the 1960s, scholars have noted the importance of pine Studies 46 (3): 340–60. fringe belts in cities (Whitehand 1967). However, the edge of the Smith, Anthony. 1990. “Towards a Global Culture?” Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity, edited by Mike Featherstone. London: Sage. city remains neglected in favor of the center, with only a few works Tech, Carlos. 1994. “Pasig through the Ages.” In Pasig: Noon, Ngayon at Bukas, 31. paying attention to the former (Thomas 1990; Waterhouse 2015). Pasig, Metro Manila: Araw ng Pasig Foundation. Although the urban social underside has been foregrounded in The Descendants of Teresa de la Paz. 1991. Teresa de la Paz and Her Two Hus- a number of studies, the urban geographical underside remains bands: A Gathering of Four Families. N.p. Velasquez, José Eduardo D. 2001. “Nagsabado sa Pasig: First Exercise of People understudied. Pow e r.” Pasig 1573–2001, 18. N.p. Border areas form part of a city’s peripheries. While modern Wagner, Logan, Hal Box, and Susan Kline Morehead. 2013. Ancient Origins of the cities have developed in a way that allows certain parts of the Mexican Plaza: From Primordial Sea to Public Space. Austin: University of periphery to evolve into suburbia, the fringe attracts illicit economic Texas Press. activities such as prostitution and gambling, or is designated to Wirth, Louis. 2002. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” In Urban life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City, edited by George Gmelch and Walter P. Zenner, 65– accommodate undesirable spaces, like cemeteries and slaughter- 82. Long Grove: Waveland Press. houses. However, although corridors of such economic activities Zobel de Ayala, Fernando. 1963. Philippine Religious Imagery. Photos by Nap happen along both sides of the borders (making boundaries seem Jamir. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila.

95 96 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 97 artificial), one must be reminded that borders are still real, espe- begot hypocrisy as the male-dominated Spanish government cially in its legal sense. One important implication of this point is turned its gaze to Manila’s women prostitutes, or mujeres publicas. that the peripheral-underside character is different in the two sides Meanwhile, the colonial capital also served as a haven for cock- of the border: those outside the border serve as sites for activities fighting, enjoyed not just by enthusiasts but even more so by the that are prohibited in, but demanded by, the city. This paper high- state and businessmen. Each arrabal (suburb) of Manila had one lights this duality of the city border: its rigidity give the border area cockpit, and Thursday and Sunday were the designated days for a legal character that treats it as no different from the city center cockfights (Camagay 1992, 140). Although looked down upon by and sets it apart from surrounding towns; yet its fluidity and flex- educated natives and Spanish civil officials, cockfighting remained ibility also provide the border area linkages with the surrounding the main form of entertainment for ordinary Manileños, as well as towns that the city center cannot enjoy as much. a constant contributor to the coffers of the state, which farmed out Cities, however, are not created equal. Capital cities, for instance, cockpit contracts beginning in 1861. The government monopoly are not ordinary urban settlements, but act as the geographical over cockpit contracts translated to annual revenues of 100,000– showcase of a province, region, or of a nation. In a sense, the entire 200,000 pesos. Chinese and mestizo Chinese contractors amassed city must appear as a center; from the perspective of political fortunes from this type of business, such as the prominent Manila elites, having areas in the capital city devoted to illicit or undesir- Chinese Tan Quien-sien (Wickberg 2000, 113–14). Clearly, cock- able activities runs the risk of undermining its ideological message. fighting was the unofficial “national sport” and remained so despite The complexity of urban border areas and fringe belts in capital the onset of US colonialism at the end of the nineteenth century cities is the subject of this work. Here, I highlight the simultaneous (Villamor 1909, 83; Malcolm 1936, 339). porosity and rigidity of the borders of American-colonial Manila Against this backdrop, American colonialism found itself having and mid-twentieth-century Quezon City, the two Philippine capi- a capital city that it perceived to be deficient due to these social tals of the previous century, in relation to two activities that were ills. Americans felt Manila had to undergo an “imperial makeover” associated with the urban fringes: cabarets and cockfighting. (Doeppers 2010). Two important factors were behind Manila’s colonial cleansing. One was the Americans’ aim to depict Spanish Manila Vice colonialism as autocratic and responsible for these social ills. For Late-nineteenth-century Manila was an urban oxymoron: a instance, Americans emphasized how the Spanish overlords perpe- cosmopolitan and conservative city. On the one hand, its rapid trated cockfighting as a vice among Filipinos (Laubach 1925, 402; urbanization liberalized the attitudes of the elite and middle Malcolm 1936, 339). The other factor was the upsurge of social classes, especially men. On the other hand, the Catholic Church’s reform movements in the mainland US that were by-products of influence remained pervasive, albeit significantly diminished, and America’s rapid urbanization, from the Progressive Movement, exerted its force on society, from state officials down to the ordi- which sought municipal reforms (Abinales 2005, 157), to anti-vice nary city residents. Thus, when it came to Manila’s perceived social crusades such as the Temperance Movement (McCoy 2011, 243). ills and vices, like prostitution and gambling, the prevailing atti- These had implications in the colony, such as in the formation of a tude was disdainful tolerance. Moral Progress League by American protestant missionaries. One This ambivalence was apparent in the case of prostitution and of the campaigns of the league was to ban cockfighting (McCoy cockfighting. Frowned upon but recognized as part of daily life and Roces 1985, 140). Sanitation and urban planning were thus not (Camagay 1995, 99–118), prostitution became legal toward the end enough to ensure the makeover; a moral prophylaxis also had to of the Spanish colonial regime (Dery 1991, 486). When venereal take place. The drive toward an urban moral cleansing persisted diseases spread quickly in the nineteenth century, ambivalence even into the 1920s. In his exposition on the moral reforms needed 98 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 99 in the Philippines, Dr. Frank Laubach (1925, 398–414) cites the In 1925, Dr. Laubach (1925, 402) declared that the “days of 1922 Report of the Methodist Annual Conference, which enumer- the cockpit are numbered” due to numerous restrictive laws. His ates five social ills: 1) the saloon, 2) the cockpit, 3) the commer- pronouncement, however, was utterly premature. Government offi- cialized prize-fighting, 4) the dance; and 5) the uncensored crime. cials themselves were aware that total elimination was unfeasible Although the new colonizers came in with a crusading zeal to given “the power of the cockpit trusts” (Malcolm 1936, 340). More clean the city, what they did was to simply sweep the dirt under the importantly, cockfighting was popular among all social classes: couch. While the change in colonial regimes led to crucial shifts, from cocheros (carriage drivers) to politicos, and remains so until most especially geographical ones, the demand of residents for today. the “services” offered by these establishments of ill-repute never Compared to cockfighting, which probably only a few Americans diminished. Indeed, the influx of US soldiers in Manila following patronized, prostitution received less opprobrium from the new the American occupation of the city even added to the demand for colonial state. Of course, one should not discount the early battles the city’s male-patronized vices, namely prostitution (Dery 1991, against prostitution in Manila, which was inextricably tied to the 480–82) and alcoholism. As a result, turn-of-the-century Manila fight versus alcoholism. Backed by Manila anti-vice crusaders, teemed with saloons and brothels; its sidewalks littered with drunk the municipal government enacted an ordinance that prevented soldiers and sailors. saloons, bars, and other drinking places from operating from 12 am The colonial state addressed the situation of uncontrolled vice to 5 am. The municipal board also prohibited the issuance of liquor (of course, with maintaining colonial stability as the main consider- licenses (with the exception of third-class “wholesale” licenses) to ation) mainly through municipal legislation, although national laws establishments located in major streets and the downtown areas, also helped. In terms of law enforcement, the city government had such as Escolta, Calle Rosario, Plaza Cervantes, and Plaza Moraga been so preoccupied with stamping out vices that it beefed up its (Malcolm 1908, 84–90; McCoy 2011, 243). The idea behind these police force, albeit without significant success (McCoy 2011, 243). campaigns was that many of the saloons and wine shops also oper- In regard to cockfighting, the policy shift was quite drastic. ated as brothels. These state actions, however, boomeranged; pros- Official tolerance during the Spanish period gave way to a long- titution became even more pronounced in the twentieth century. term policy of gradual elimination through municipal and national In fact, the Americans’ arrival gave rise to a place of entertainment legislation. Nonetheless, the new colonial state was realistic that served as a new front for prostitution rings: the cabaret. enough not to advocate an abrupt and absolute abolition. At the Cabarets, or dance halls, were “a distinctly American addition to national level, Philippine Act 82 empowered municipal govern- Manila’s nightlife.” The more prominent ones even became tourist ments to regulate, permit, or prohibit cockfighting and the keeping attractions (Malcolm 1957, 199; [Anon.] 1938, 48). Here the baila- or training of fighting cocks, as well as to close cockpits (Philippine rinas were the center of attention. Customers paid an amount, Legislature 1909, 39). Cockfighting held in cockpits should only be around twenty centavos (or ten cents, the rate during the 1930s), scheduled during legal holidays and for a period not to exceed that allowed them to dance with a bailarina for a certain amount three days during the fiesta of the town (ibid.; Laubach 1925, 402). of time. The bailarinas, or taxi dancers, were masters of a wide At this point, it is interesting to note the Supreme Court’s (1919, range of dances: waltz, foxtrot, one step, etc. If a client, whether 714) view on this matter: “It must be conceded that cockfighting is American or Filipino, wanted a bailarina to sit and drink with him, on about the same plane as the conducting of dance halls and the he had to pay her the equivalent amount of the dances foregone selling of liquor; and it is generally recognized that police supervi- (ibid., 53–54). American legal luminary George Malcolm compared sion over these forms of entertainment and diversion can be much the bailarinas with Japan’s geishas, China’s sing-song girls, and more strict than over activities of a harmless nature.” America’s taxi-dancers. He then described how bailarinas survived 100 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 101 the pressures of a rapidly urbanizing city: remedy this seeming moral breakdown. Firstly, under the Philippine Commission Act no. 519 of 1902, prostitution was declared illegal They will also flirt with suitors with direful consequences when jealousy is (Terami-Wada 1986, 309). City ordinances also sought to curtail the inflamed to passionate deeds. The money made by these girls of a night is activities of cabarets. While section 590 of Manila’s revised ordi- by no means insignificant. A few of them salt away their earnings in banks; nances of 1917 allowed the maintenance of a public dance hall for others use their money to attend school in the daytime; others support a so long as the proper licenses were obtained, section 98 prohibited family or a good-for-nothing common-law husband, while still others go the playing of any musical instrument in saloons, bars, or drinking the pace that kills. (Malcolm 1936, 345) places—a seemingly ridiculous provision that actually targeted cabarets (Malcolm 1917, 90–91). Unfortunately, not a few of the bailarinas would eventually As cabarets and dance halls mushroomed in Manila, concerned fall into the trap of men who deceived them with false promises. citizens began complaining against these “immoral” establish- Dance halls, according to state prosecutor Ignacio Villamor, were ments and brought them into public discussions. Moralists “the main cause of the ruin of many girls” (Villamor 1909, 74). denounced how cabarets served to abet adulterous relations. In the early American period, most of the customers in caba- Lamentably, the resulting discourse emphasized the perversion rets were American soldiers and sailors (Lowe 1938, 136). The of the morals of young men rather than the structural oppression Americans’ demand for alcoholic drinks stimulated the increase in of women. Public discussions eventually translated into public the number of saloons and other places of leisure. Many of these protests. Public outrage even forced the Municipal Board to pass soldiers sought women in the saloons and liquor stores or in the a resolution limiting the operating days of cabarets to Saturdays brothels outside the downtown area (Mactal 2010, 103–4, 162–65). and Sundays; however, shortly afterwards the Board revoked it. Also, many of the early cabarets were established by ex-Amer- But in 1908 protests against cabarets succeeded in forcing the city ican soldiers (Torres 2010, 178). Although civilians also patron- government to limit their operating hours and then ban them alto- ized cabarets, bailarinas favored US military men as customers. gether (Villamor 1909, 56, 74; McCoy 2011, 244). John Canson, owner of the famous Santa Ana Cabaret, began his The moralists’ biggest victory came in 1917 when the city govern- foray into the business by establishing the Santa Ana Road House, ment raided Gardenia’s cabarets and brothels. Gardenia, which was “where over a hundred bailarinas danced nightly for a peseta a established in 1900 in Sampaloc district, was Manila’s most infa- dance, and where a greater portion of its patrons were soldiers mous red-light district mainly because its clients’ demands varied from [Fort] McKinley” (Freeman n.d., 20). Eventually, cabarets widely in terms of race: it showcased not only Filipinas, but also attracted many young middle- and upper-class students who were “white” and “yellow” prostitutes. Under instructions from Interior enamored by the bailarinas. In 1909 Villamor (1909, 56) estimated Secretary Rafael Palma, the city government closed it down in 1917 that 70 percent of the clients were students (cf. Laubach 1925, 406). due to pressure from citizens (Laubach 1925, 406–8; Terami-Wada Malcolm (1936, 346) could even recall the day he went to Maypajo 1986, 310). Palma’s rationale for this campaign was that dance halls Cabaret and met a bailarina named Juanita after ordering glasses had become “a real menace to the health and morals of the city” of San Miguel Beer. (Baja 1933, 450). The campaign also covered other parts of the city The set-up in cabarets made them a convenient cover for pros- and the neighboring municipalities of Caloocan, Pasay, San Juan titution (Laubach 1925, 406; Baja 1939, 455). According to Alfred del Monte, and Makati (450; MT 1918, 1). McCoy (2011, 244), “Filipina bailarinas often practiced a coy prosti- Despite the publicity the Gardenia raid generated, Manila tution by escorting customers to nearby lodging houses.” The situ- remained a magnet for illegal brothels. In fact, critics noted that ation had become so serious that the state enacted measures to the 1917 campaign only caused prostitutes to move to other parts 102 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 103 of the city and to the suburbs (Baja 1933, 450), and that the pros- and no survey was done before 1903 (Municipal Board of Manila titutes sent to Davao after the raid eventually returned to Manila 1904, 112). Another factor behind the significance of borders was (Laubach 1925, 408). One major factor behind the persistence of the expansion of Manila’s territory early in the colonial period. these dance halls, even within city boundaries, was the involve- Act 183 of the Philippine Commission (1901, 3–5) was the basis ment of local politicians, who had been compromised by graft and of the new territory and was amended and made permanent in their weak implementation of the law (MT 1918, 1). This reality the amended city charter, Act 1407 (Malcolm 1908, 21–23). This was most visible in the 1920s, as the Jazz Age had sashayed its way legislation gave Manila’s municipal board the power to “suppress into Manila’s cabarets (Keppy 2013), and as the “moral politics” of houses of ill fame and other disorderly houses, gaming houses, Prohibition-era America had spilled over into the Philippines. In gambling, and all fraudulent devices for the purpose of gain and 1922, the municipal board deliberated on a bill that would bring of obtaining money or property” (US Philippine Commission 1901, the dance halls back; the legal measure, nonetheless, was met by 11). Interestingly, despite the aforementioned, the charter was a “flood of protests,” and did not prosper (Laubach 1925, 406). The not yet certain about its position regarding cockfighting, as the same scenario was repeated in 1926, but this time, the municipal municipal board was given the mandate to “regulate and license board considered allowing both cabarets and cockpits within city or suppress cock-fighting and cock-pits” (12). This ambivalent posi- limits (MT 1926a, 2; 1926b, 1). tion persisted until the 1910s: although the revised charter empow- In the end, the opponents of cabarets and cockpits won, as ered the Mayor to issue licenses to cockpits and cockfighting, no evinced by the revised city charter of 1927. Although the Municipal applicable item existed in the schedule of license and permit fees Board still granted licenses to cabarets, it also stipulated that (Malcolm 1917, 37, 277). Despite the ambiguity, cockpit operators “cabarets can only be established and made to function within did not want to risk their businesses. For example, when the town the distance of one-half kilometer from the city limits” (Malcolm of Santa Ana was incorporated into Manila’s territory, cockpits in 1927, 407). In regard to cockfighting, although ambiguous provi- the area closed down immediately (MT 1902, 1). Santa Ana’s case sions remained in the 1927 charter, an important proviso in this was an early revelation of how Manila’s boundaries had concrete charter stressed, “The government’s policy as regards cockfighting implications in the geography of vice. has been directed towards the gradual restriction thereof ” (37). From the perspective of Manila’s officials, city boundaries acted as a force field that kept unwanted activities away. However, from Happy Times along the Borders the point-of-view of cabaret and cockpit owners, the same bound- Throughout the see-saw campaign against cabarets and cock- aries gave them legal shelter from Manila’s moral zealots and pits in Manila, neighboring towns looked the other way. The result law enforcers (see map). As the municipal board (1908, 55) itself was as expected: vice simply moved into these other towns, but admitted: “The district just beyond the city limits, at several points, still near the city boundaries to make them accessible to their is infested with clusters of gambling joints, cockpits, and dance Manila-based patrons ([Anon.] 1934, 35–36; MT 1910, 2, 5; Keppy halls of a low order, in some of which prostitution is practiced or 2013). The legal reality of Manila’s boundaries, although physically fostered.” “non-existent,” thus obtained a geographical reality. Early on, cockpit operators eluded the most stringent of laws City borders were such an important aspect of municipal govern- by conducting illegal cockfights, calledtopadas , often “in barrios ance that fixing the city boundaries, legally and physically, was one remote from the centers of population and beyond the vigilance of of the first things that the municipal board accomplished upon the municipal authorities” (Villamor 1909, 83). Simply put, cockpit the consolidation of US colonialism. The reason was that Manila’s operators took the most logical step to continue their activities: boundaries were deficient: stones were used to demarcate them move their businesses just outside the borders. Throughout the 104 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 105

flourished in the border zones. Maypajo, according to one account, was the largest in the world (Fitch 1913, 61) and attracted thousands of enthusiasts every Sunday (Lyons 1922, 10). Cabaret operators used the same strategy (Torres 2010, 178; McCoy 2011, 244). After the Gardenia raid, Manila’s peripheries became the favored site of a growing number of cabarets. However, most of these post-raid cabarets belonged to the lowest rung, while many of the more prominent ones—those patronized by the middle and upper classes—had been established early in the colonial period. By the 1920s, these suburban cabarets “had superseded the city’s brothels, lending a certain legitimacy to this illicit enterprise” (McCoy 2011, 244). Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, at least 14 cabarets operated in the greater Manila area (Philippine Education Company 1941, 347). Santa Ana Cabaret in Makati was the most popular. Owned by John Canson and “[r]eputed and generally conceded to be in the world’s largest dance hall,” it opened in 1910 and charged an admis- sion fee of P 0.50 per person. Regular patrons were Manila’s elite, both Filipinos and Americans, including US military personnel (Lyons 1921, 11; [Anon.] 1938, 54; Malcolm 1936, 346). Lewis Gleeck (1977, 98), an expert on the history of the Manila American community, asserts that many Filipino-American mestizas were “the offspring of Canson’s Santa Ana bailerinas and American fathers, some of them prominent in the community.” Map. Locations of cabarets in towns adjacent to Manila, 1937–1940 Maypajo Cabaret in Caloocan was another prominent cabaret. Legend: A. Bolinao Amusement Enterprises, B. Bolinao Cabaret, C. Centro It was not as fancy as Santa Ana, although American civilians and Cabaret, D. Cosmopolitan Cabaret, E. Galas Cabaret, F. Imperial (for- merly Ambassador), G. La Loma Cabaret, H. La Loma Recreation Hall, I. military men also went there (Malcolm 1936, 346; Lowe 1938, 136; Lerma Park Cabaret, J. Luzon Cabaret, K. Mabuhay Cabaret, L. Malabon [Anon.] 1938, 54). Also located in Caloocan was Lerma Cabaret, Recreation Hall, M. Mariquina Cabaret, N. Maypajo Cabaret, O. Navotas Recreation Hall, P. Old La Loma Cabaret, Q. Olympia Cabaret, R. San Juan owned and operated by American AW Bert Yearsley. According Cabaret, S. Santa Ana Cabaret, T. Whoopee Cabaret to American Chamber of Commerce Journal editor Norbert Lyons Sources: Philippine Education Company, 1937, 466; Philippine Education (1922, 10), “Manila’s night life is at its gayest” in the Lerma cabaret. Company 1940, 559; Philippine Education Company, 1941, 347. Meanwhile, the Whoopee Cabaret in Pasay advertised itself as N.B. Prewar Manila directories did not include cockpits in their listings. “Owned and Patronized by Filipinos” (Salonga 1934, 115). Given the moralist urban-based crusades of the early twentieth century, the American colonial period magnified the marginality American colonial period, the border areas outside the capital of the border areas, as these became a haven for other illegal and teemed with cockpits (Supreme Court 1919, 709–10). Maypajo reprehensible activities driven out of Manila. In this period, illegal Cockpit in Caloocan was the largest of these establishments that gambling was rampant in the towns of Mandaluyong, Malabon, 106 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 107 and Pasay, as well as in the peripheral districts of Manila. Gambling thus became a “vice zone of roadside brothels and gambling joints operators tricked law-enforcement officials by moving their oper- with tough gangsters and compromised local governments.” The ations just outside the city limits (Baja 1933, 342–49, 366). Major problem had worsened by the 1920s that the constabulary took Emanuel Baja (355) of the Philippine Constabulary noted how over the police force of the nine towns that surrounded the capital operating in the peripheries gave gambling syndicates an advan- (McCoy 2011, 357). tage: “For instance, since the city vice squads leave these people Colonial-era La Loma exemplified how social and geographical no repose, in order to thwart the police they sometimes leave the marginalization coincided in a particular space and how socially city and go to the adjoining municipalities such as Pasay, near reprehensible activities existed in spatial clusters. La Loma’s periph- the cockpit, and on Calle Dominga and, also, in Malabon and San eral character surfaced under Spanish rule. By the 1870s, it was the Felipe Neri [Mandaluyong] where they transfer their rendezvous.” location of several cemeteries, including a Chinese cemetery (Chu Baja’s statement reveals how illicit activities, cockpits, cabarets, 2010, 223–24). It was also the site of a hospital for the Chinese, and the like gravitated toward one another and clustered near the who, though economically dominant, were looked down upon by borders. One tourist guidebook even said that the major cabarets Filipino society. Then in 1901, a certain Don Juancho Mapa, along “may all be visited in one evening” ([Anon.] 1938, 54) and listed a with Pedro Casimiro and Manuel Guison, renovated and expanded cockpit and a cabaret under a directed tour: “Through the Paco a small cockpit, which became known as the La Loma Cockpit district and old walled cemetery, thence passing San Pedro Makati and turned it into one of the most important sources of income in cockpit, Santa Ana Cabaret, and along the banks of the Pasig River the area (Decaesstecker 1978, 29–31). A popular cabaret patron- to Guadalupe Ruins, through the towns of Pasig, Mariquina, San ized mainly by Filipinos also found a home in La Loma ([Anon.] Mateo and Montalban, returning via Fort William McKinley and 1938, 54). A frequent customer there himself, Malcolm (1957, 199; Pasay to Manila” (48). Gleeck 1977, 91) regarded La Loma Cabaret as one that catered to Petty crimes followed suit. A state prosecutor believed that those who wanted more excitement. A certain Sy Chiuco owned dance halls directly contributed to incidences of robbery and and operated this establishment from 1926 to January 1956. For theft, such as in cases that involved men stealing to obtain a typical night of dancing, the cabaret charged P 0.30 per dance, money to spend in dance halls (Villamor 1909, 56). Also, gangs a P 0.10 entrance fee, and P 0.20 to the “bailarina” after the dance included cabarets as part of their respective turfs. For example, (Supreme Court 1960). Long-time residents in the 1970s regarded Makati’s notorious Veintenueve gang operated around the Luzon the cabaret and the cockpit as two of the most prominent estab- and Olympia cabarets. The awkwardly named Filipino Physical lishments in the 1930s (Decaesstecker 1978, 28). However, it was Culturalists, which started as a sporting association and eventu- also in the 1930s that the notorious Liberty gang ruled La Loma’s ally became a gang, gravitated toward Pasay Cabaret (Macaraig streets and targeted American cabaret customers. Police offi- 1929, 414–17; de Gannaban 1930, 6; McCoy 2011, 357). There were cials believed that this group emerged in response to the abusive also cases in which cabaret employees were themselves gang- behavior of drunk Americans in cabarets, especially military men sters (McCoy and Roces 1985, 65). The presence of gangs imper- (Macaraig 1929, 414–17). Despite its rurality, La Loma earned a iled the operations of cabarets and the safety of their employees reputation as “the Hell’s Kitchen of Manila and the rendezvous of and patrons. Gangs were also known to mug abusive American gangsters” (Malcolm 1957, 199; McCoy 2011, 357). soldiers who maltreated chauffeurs outside cabarets. At the same Three important factors sustained this socio-spatial structure time, rich and power-hungry men would order gang members to at the urban fringes, exemplified by La Loma. Aside from the abduct bailarinas, intimidate rival suitors, or cause disturbances fundamental reality that these establishments catered to an insa- in the cabaret (Macaraig 1929, 416–17). Manila’s suburban fringe tiable demand, one must also give importance to their significant 108 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 109 contribution to municipal revenues, state collusion and negligence, the pintacasi (feast day of the town’s patron saint), which was the and enhanced mobility. only day in the calendar when a town was allowed to hold cock- The profitability of vice discouraged local governments from fights outside the normal Thursday and Sunday fights. They did strictly enforcing laws because they also benefited from it (Villamor so by postponing or advancing the day of celebration to increase 1909, 84). In Pasay and other suburban towns, saloons and brothels the number of holidays. Two towns that were consolidated into contributed generously to municipal coffers (Gleeck 1998, 262; a single territory took advantage of this situation by having two McCoy 2011, 358, 368). The stakes were so high that rivalries even pintacasi. These legal maneuvers attracted moretahures or profes- among operators ensued, while the dominant ones tried to protect sional gamblers from various places to spend money not just on their respective monopolies. For example, in 1912 a businessman cockfights, but also in other gambling houses (Villamor 1909, 84). applied for a license to operate five cockpits in Rizal province, all Because cockpits and cabarets were often found outside city within Manila’s border zone (Supreme Court 1919, 709–10). limits, accessibility proved crucial. Fortunately for owners and The second factor is related to the first one: how could officials patrons, early-twentieth-century Manila saw urban transport have gone after the operators of cockpits and cabarets when doing motorization. Motorized mobility made these cabarets and cock- so went against their interests? Firstly, politicians themselves pits accessible, and thus intertwined two aspects of a virile life- patronized these places (McCoy and Roces 1985, 41 and 151). style in the colony (Pante 2014, 259). As early as 1910, the Manila Many of them even fought anti-cockfighting bills in the national Times already observed how cockfight patrons who usually took legislature (Gleeck 1998, 206). Manuel Quezon, a prominent carromatas (two-wheeled carriages) going to the cockpits (see fig. lawmaker and future president, frequented cabarets (Malcolm 1) switched to the electric streetcar, which was inaugurated in 1957, 88). Meanwhile, Santa Ana Cabaret owner Canson ensured 1905 and had terminals outside city limits and near the cockpits the continued profitability of his business by becoming Quezon’s (MT 1910, 25). Cockpit patrons “crowd[ed] the street cars, carrying close friend and donating fire engines to the municipal govern- their roosters in their arms and often bringing their families along” ment of Makati, the town where his cabaret was located (Gleeck 1977, 100–101). Even among politicians who were non-enthusiasts, the cockpit was also a source of political capital: due to the popular appeal of cockfighting, politicians often turned these events into political gatherings. Like cockpits, cabarets were also strategic political spaces to mobilize people, albeit limited to the middle and upper classes. For example, the Santa Ana Cabaret served as the venue for the charity ball of the Philippine Anti-Tuberculosis Society (Legarda 1929, 140), a cause-oriented group that relied on the support of prominent politicians, such as Quezon. At the local level, cockpit owners often exerted their influence over Manila’s municipal board (McCoy and Roces 1985, 42), and at the outset, its police force had already been compromised and inefficient (41, 151). Outside Manila, violations of gambling and cockpit laws were numerous, and it was not unusual for town officials to Fig. 1. Carromatas and cocheros outside a cockpit near Manila. be the violators themselves. Municipal officials used legal loop- Source: American History Collection, Rizal Library, Ateneo de Manila holes to increase the number of days for cockfighting in relation to University. 110 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 111

(Lyons 1922, 10). This practice of streetcar passengers riding along In 1935, the Philippine Commonwealth was inaugurated as a with their game cocks was so common (Fitch 1913, 61; Malcolm transitional ten-year period before the US granted Filipinos full 1936, 340) that an ordinance had to be amended to restrict such independence. The Commonwealth government, headed by Pres. riders to second-class compartments (Malcolm 1908, 186). The Quezon, exercised control over practically all domestic concerns. boost in cockpit revenues due to the streetcars even became the During this period, Quezon pushed for the creation of a new city topic of a 1923 Bagong Lipang Kalabaw (1923, 10) editorial cartoon. just outside Manila, to be carved out of various suburban towns, to The streetcar also enhanced the accessibility of cabarets, with serve as a future capital. And in 1939, via Commonwealth Act 502, almost all major ones found near terminals: Santa Ana Cabaret Quezon City became the realization of that objective. Quezon envi- at the end of the Paco line, Maypajo Cabaret and the Tondo line, sioned it as a model city, a home for Manila’s working class who Rainbow Cabaret and the San Juan del Monte line, and the La Loma suffered from housing shortage. Quezon City was thus essentially Cabaret and the Sta. Cruz line (Torres 2010, 178). American soldiers a suburb of Manila (Pante 2017). in Fort McKinley frequented the Santa Ana Cabaret because it was Just like in the case of Manila, politicians prohibited caba- just a streetcar ride away from the fort (Pante 2014, 259). However, rets and cockpits in Quezon City to give it a favorable image. given that the cabarets’ clientele was more upwardly mobile than Commonwealth Act 601 granted the President “complete, abso- cockfight enthusiasts, the advent of automobility had more impact lute and unlimited power to promulgate regulations governing the among the former, a change that cabaret advertisements mirrored. establishment and operation of places of amusements, including In the 1920s, ads for the San Juan Cabaret proclaimed, “just one cockpits” and essentially made “an unconditional surrender of minute away from the car line” (Philippine Carnival Association legislative powers unto the Executive without any limitation what- 1921); however, in the 1930s this tagline gave way to new ones: soever.” This law gave the president excessive power—the Supreme “10 minutes by motor car from downtown districts” (American Court (1956) would deem it unconstitutional decades after—and Express 1937, 38) and “about 15 minutes in a taxi from Luneta” thus revealed Quezon’s drive to control the most important cities (Anon. 1934, 35–36). of the country, a dictatorial set-up justified as part of his anti-gam- Although cabaret and cockpit patrons favored motorized vehi- bling campaign (PM 1936, 117). As a chartered city, Quezon City cles over horse-drawn carriages, the latter remained integral in was subject to this law. Manila’s underside economy. In particular, carromata cocheros But there’s the rub: prior to the creation of Quezon City, a acted as prostitution “agents,” with a number of them “employed number of cabarets and cockpits had been built in areas just to stop young men late at night and invite them to the homes of outside Manila’s borders that would eventually become part of prostitutes” (Laubach 1925, 409). These transactions, which were Quezon City’s territory. These border areas included Galas and eventually facilitated using automobiles, also had links with the La Loma. Thus, the act of “cleaning” Quezon City of its cabarets cabarets (Baja 1939, 454). and cockpits became a complicated task. For example, when officials ordered cabarets in Quezon City to cease operations by 18 Quezon City’s Geographical Conundrum January 1940, at least three cabarets were affected in the Galas Although Manila’s moral crusaders constantly complained and La Loma areas alone. Operators tried to resort to their usual about cabarets and cockpits, the socio-spatial status quo described ways: above remained stable throughout the American colonial period. Perhaps the only serious challenge this modus vivendi faced was The Municipal Board of Quezon City raised their annual license fees from the decision of the Philippine Commonwealth government to P900 to P5,000. The cabarets were willing to pay and are now paying this create a new city that would eventually serve as the nation’s capital. fee but the board has given them until June to leave the city premises. 112 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 113

The cockpits also have been told to move out of the new city. Philippines( When 15,000 families and 6,000 college students move in, how many caba- Commonweal 1940, 12) rets will there be in Mariquina, which is only three kilometers, as a college boy’s coupe runs, from university town? And will Mariquina cabarets be Despite the seeming strict implementation of the law, no signif- able to afford to open only over weekends? icant change in the socio-spatial structure of the borders zones resulted from Quezon City’s establishment. The three enabling The San Juan cabaret is only six kilometers away from the proposed site of factors enumerated above persisted in Quezon City’s peculiar the University. That’s no farther than the Caloocan cabarets are from the geography even after the Philippines had gained independence in present U.P. campus. And the proposed U.P. campus is only two kilometers 1946. The convergence of interests of cabaret and cockpit oper- away from Camp Murphy, where there are a lot of dashing army men to ators, not to mention those of politicians, lingered. During the make the co-ed’s heart go pit-a-pat and where, a report has it, there is at Commonwealth period, state-sponsored activities continued to least one whorehouse. be held at the Santa Ana Cabaret, such as the ball and pageant organized by the Philippine Tuberculosis Society in 1940 that was held on President Quezon’s birthday (Litiatco 1940, 353). The revenues that local governments derived from these establishments were as high as ever to the point that high-income cities like Cebu and Davao pushed for amendments in their charters to allow their municipal governments to tax and regulate cockfighting and cockpits. Although both legislative moves failed—vetoed in 1938 by Quezon, who stressed that having cockpits in chartered cities was unwise (Quezon 1939, 496) and ran counter to the national government’s intention “to suppress gradually the cockfighting vice and other vices of similar nature” (430)—the fact that these local governments even considered the said amendments spoke volumes regarding the temptation coming from moneyed interests. As for the issue of accessibility, the case of the University of the Philippines (UP) provides us with an instructive example. Coinciding with the founding of Quezon City was the planned transfer of the UP campus from Manila to the future capital in 1942. The Diliman area in Quezon City was chosen as the new site. Quezon himself initiated the move. His rationale was that urban distractions had diluted the spirit of scholarship in the old campus in “sinful Manila, with all its devices for prodigality and waste” (Philippine Graphic 1938, 5). The rurality of Quezon City, national and university officials believed, would preserve an academic atmosphere. Critics, Fig. 2. Artwork depicting a UP student surprised by his sudden proximity to however, noted that the new location in the suburban peripheries cabarets as a result of the campus relocation to Quezon City (Philippine made future UP students, especially those who drove their own cars, Graphic 1938, 4). vulnerable to the temptation of cabarets in the area (see fig. 2): 114 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 115

The Japanese colonial period, from 1942 to 1945, delayed UP’s PHP 53,595,000, and out of this total, entrance fees for “cock- planned relocation—which took place in 1948—but did not do fights and races” amounted to PHP 1,250,000. This amount did not much to remap Manila’s border zones. Indeed, continuity rather include purchases of “fighting cocks and feeds” (PHP 3,602,000) than change marked the trajectory from pre-war to post-war nor “losses at cockfights, races, mahjong, sweepstakes, etc.” Manila. During the Japanese occupation, Manila’s municipal (PHP 3,148,000). Meanwhile, spending on “dances, night clubs, officials still held a prejudiced view toward cabarets and cock- cabarets” amounted to PHP 1,341,000. In comparison total family pits. Although in the then-enlarged territory of Manila cabarets expenditures for May amounted to PHP 3,059,652,000 (Bureau of and cockpits were allowed to operate, Executive Order no. 95 the Census and Statistics 1968, 1, 8). Based on these data, it seems prohibited the establishment of these businesses within a radius that independence had minimal impact on the geography of vice of two hundred meters from any city hall or municipal building. in the greater Manila area, which traces its roots to as far back as Cockfights were allowed but only on Sundays and legal holidays, or the late Spanish colonial period. for a period not exceeding three days during the town fiesta (Office In 1960, the Araneta Coliseum was inaugurated in Cubao, of the Mayor 1942, 83, 88). In the early post-war period, cabarets Quezon City’s commercial district. The coliseum became famous for and cockpits remained important places of entertainment in the hosting cockfighting derbies. In May 1969 it hosted the International metropolitan area. Just a few years removed from a devastating Cockfight Derby, the first time an international cockfight event was war, Manila had 14 dance halls but no cockpits; Quezon City had held in the country and then “the biggest event in native cocker one dance hall and one cockpit (Bureau of the Census and Statistics history.” This “sabong a la mode” featured 65 bouts and drew a 1948, 100–101). The establishment of new cockpits in border areas crowd of 8,000 (Quijano de Manila 1980, 237). If cockfighting existed continued in the succeeding years. In November 1953, Leon Roque in Manila’s peripheries in the colonial era, in postwar Quezon City, began operating the Grace Park Cockpit on 3rd Ave., Grace Park, it occupied the very center of the new capital city. Caloocan. Under Ordinance No. 6, series of 1953, Caloocan imposed a minimum distance of “250 lineal meters from any city, munic- Conclusion ipal or provincial building, public plazas, schools, churches, etc.” The specific historical geography of cabarets and cockpits in the on cockpits. This provision contradicted Presidential Executive environs of Manila allows us to see the socio-spatial significance Order No. 318 of 1941, and therefore the Office of the President of municipal borders and border zones. As a result of a moralist had instructed the Provincial Treasurer of Rizal to stop the cockpit crusade in the capital city, these places of vice scampered away from operating, although Roque disregarded the order (Supreme but found refuge just outside the city boundaries. But more than Court 1956). just a safe haven, the border zones provided sustenance to the said Cabarets in the postwar period also continued to post profits. establishments. Moreover, these areas became magnets for other From January 1947 to August 1950, the La Loma Cabaret, for activities of Manila’s underside. example, earned PHP 59,160.40 from gate admissions (PHP 0.10 Despite the persistence of anti-vice crusades, cockpits and each), PHP 5,339.90 from restaurant sales, PHP 47,459.10 from bar cabarets enjoyed happy times along the borders, which streetcars sales (Supreme Court 1960). Moreover, cabarets, cockpits, and other and automobiles aided. Furthermore, the allure of money made similar places of amusement still provided municipal governments law enforcers easy prey to operators, while politicians themselves a significant source of additional revenue (Supreme Court 1956). were patrons of these establishments. Therefore, even with the Expenditure data in 1965 confirm that cockpits and cabarets purported image of a model city attached to the future successor of continued to generate demand in post-war Manila and its suburbs, Manila, Quezon City became more of a conundrum when it incor- including Quezon City. Total expenditures for recreation reached porated within its territory the same border areas that nurtured 116 Cleaning the Capital MICHAEL D. PANTE 117 cockpits and cabarets. That conundrum survived the Japanese ———. 1938 (February). “Gateway” to Manila. The Only Complete GUIDE BOOK colonial period and continued in the post-colonial era. to the Orient’s Most Charming City. 13th ed. N.d.: n.p. Bagong Lipang Kalabaw. 1923 (May 2). Ang Meralco sa Loob ng Hardin Botan- This complex geographical reality could not have been eluci- iko, 10. dated using the conventional framework that treats municipali- Baja, Emanuel A. 1933. Philippine Police System and Its Problems. Manila: Po- ties and cities as homogenous entities defined by their respective bre’s Press. centers. Studying cabarets and cockpits from the perspective of Bureau of the Census and Statistics 1948. Facts and Figures about Economic and Social Conditions of the Philippines, 1946–1947. Manila: Bureau of Printing. Manila’s center limits us to the city’s geographical boundaries and ———. 1968. Special Release no. 70-B (Region I), Series of 1968, Month of May: thus may lead us to conclude that the moralist crusade of the early Total Family Expenditures by Expenditure Group and Item of Expenditure, Re- twentieth century was successful in driving the establishments gion I: 1965. Manila: Bureau of the Census and Statistics. away. At the same time, taking the perspective of the neighboring Camagay, Maria Luisa T. 1992. Kasaysayang Panlipunan ng Maynila, 1765–1898. Diliman: Maria Luisa T. Camagay. towns from their respective centers prevents us from seeing the ———. 1995. Working Women of Manila in the 19th Century. Quezon City: Uni- totality and coherence behind the presence of cabarets and cock- versity of the Philippines Press. pits in Caloocan, Quezon City, San Juan, Pasay, and other areas. In Chu, Richard T. 2010. Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, contrast, by using borders and border zones as analytic tools and and Culture, 1860s–1930s. Pasig City: Anvil. understanding their duality as simultaneously porous and rigid, we De Gannaban, Rafael. 1930 (October). Manila Gangs: Their Origin and Objects. Khaki and Red: Official Organ of the Constabulary and Police, 5–6, 12. can substantially unpack the socio-spatial complexity of vices in Decaesstecker, Donald Denise. 1978. Impoverished Urban Filipino Families. the greater Manila area. Lastly, this study hopes to contribute to a Manila: UST Press. deeper understanding of suburbanization as a global phenomenon Dery, Luis C. 1991. “Prostitution in Colonial Manila.” Philippine Studies 39 (4): (Keil 2018) that goes beyond the stereotypical, Western-derived 475–89. The Diliman Star. 1952 (November 8). “There are Strange Goings-on in Q. C.,” 7. image of a “crabgrass frontier” (Jackson 1985). The experience of Doeppers, Daniel F. 2010. “Manila’s Imperial Makeover: Security, Health, and Manila and Quezon City should force urban studies scholars to Symbolism.” In Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern Amer- come up with new frameworks that consider how colonialism ican State, edited by A. W. McCoy and F. A. Scarano, 489–98. Quezon City: and poverty influence suburbanization in non-Western socie- Ateneo de Manila University Press. ties. Similar to what Harms (2011) has noted in the fringe areas Fitch, George Hamlin. 1913. The Critic in the Orient. San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company. surrounding Ho Chi Minh City, the border zones of Manila demon- Freeman, Charles F. n.d. Tropical Tropics. N.d., n.p. strate not a homogeneous site of elite consumption and conveni- Gleeck, Lewis E. Jr. 1977. The Manila Americans, 1901–1964. Manila: Carmelo ence as in the American suburbs, but one of crime, corruption, and and Bauermann. street-level conflicts that exist whenever income inequalities are ———. 1998. The American Half-Century (1898–1946). Rev. ed. Quezon City: New Day. projected unto urban space. Harms, Erik. 2011. Saigon’s Edge: On the Margins of Ho Chi Minh City. Minneapo- lis: University of Minnesota Press. Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United References States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Abinales, Patricio N. 2005. “Progressive–Machine Conflict in Early-Twenti- Keil, Roger. 2018. 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ARISTOTLE WAS THE FIRST THINKER to systematically emphasize the role of habituation in the formation of an excellent or virtuous character. Since then, ethics, or the pursuit of eudaimonia, became associated with skill (techné)—a kind of soul-activity aimed at progressively achieving degrees of perfection relative to one’s situatedness. With Aristotle, it became apparent that happiness is something that one does, and not something that naturally occurs, nor something that waits for us at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. Ethics, etymologically rooted in ethos (custom, habit) is essentially an activity based on a multi-dimen- sional set of human skills that are constantly tested and adapted to various contexts and conditions arising from our interpersonal, social, and political engagements. Excellence (arête) or perfection in the human context is a matter of harmonizing oneself with one’s rational nature by habitually responding to differing demands of different situations excellently, that is, to skillfully exhibit and hold fast to our humanity even in the most inhumane of situations. Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics begins with a statement precisely stressing this point:

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is one that is formed

121 122 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 123

by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that be happy, and perhaps a man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death. As stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move we said, then, happiness seems to need this sort of prosperity in addition; upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand for which reason some identify happiness with good fortune, though others times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything identify it with virtue. (17) else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; Aristotle suggests that there is more to eudaimonia than an rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by excellent character. Access to external goods, specifically social habit. (Aristotle 1998, 28) capital, to use modern parlance, is crucial in achieving one’s ultimate telos; for life in the polis, after all, is ultimately the only locale Despite the historical novelty of Aristotle’s insight concerning where human happiness is possible. Good education, a decent the adaptive component of excellence in a human being’s pursuit family, an intelligent and reliable set of friends, and shares of social of happiness, it is nonetheless apparent that his theory remains or political power are just some of the things that make the road enmeshed within the ambit of the rationalistic tradition of ethics to happiness a bit smoother. It must be said, however, that lack made famous by none other than his teacher, Plato. Virtue, as of these external goods does not absolutely negate one’s ability to defined by Aristotle as a “disposition to choose the mean” (36), the flourish, though having them definitely won’t hurt. Social circum- mean defined as the appropriate response to particular situations, stances play a crucial role in the formation of a happy, that is, an is achieved as a result of a subjective and intentional reckoning of excellent person. Although there is no guarantee that enjoying objective demands as presented to us by concrete situations that favorable social historicity translates into an ethical life, Aristotle call for human—that is—rational responses. Disposition, in this nevertheless believes that people who find themselves in such context, is practical wisdom concretized. It is practical wisdom contexts are more likely to be happy than those who do not share forged, shaped, and directed by time, repetition, and most impor- the same fate. These goods are by no means absolute goods in tantly, reason, to consciously transcend the appetitive in favor themselves. But they aid in negotiating paths toward virtue. of the rational. As with his contemporaries, Aristotle leaves no This brings me to the point of this essay. I have always doubt in our minds that reason remains the supreme principle of wondered whether those who exist in the margins of society, the morality, albeit now furnished with a concrete relationship with economically challenged and socially disadvantaged, have access empirical circumstances and practical habit, thereby avoiding a to happiness given the social conditions in which they live. The Platonic plunge, so to speak. easy answer of course, is, “Of course.” After all, aren’t Filipinos (rich Yet there is one crucial passage in the Nicomachean Ethics and poor alike) by reputation considered to be one of the happiest which somewhat affords Aristotle a unique place in the history of and most optimistic people in the world?1 Seldom would we see ethical philosophy. Book I, section b10 reads, pictures of poor people looking depressed. In fact, it is often us, the not-so-poor, who become depressed once we see the background Yet evidently, as we said, it (happiness) needs the external goods as well; for of the photos we are looking at—dilapidated shanties performing it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment. balancing acts on wooden stilts atop a river of garbage. In addition, In many actions we use friends and riches and political power as instru- it is quite apparent that Aristotle builds his argument from the ments; and there are some things the lack of which takes the luster from presupposition of human rationality, which is universal, and not happiness—good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very on the contingencies of historical facticity, though the latter has 124 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 125 significant implications to the former as I have mentioned above. [S]lum is more than so-called less privileged, poverty-stricken people. It is a But I don’t intend to answer my obvious question with an obvious way of life—a society in microcosm. To really understand slum life, it has to answer. What I wish to accomplish is a critical examination of the be viewed in this manner, and not in terms of the abstract model of those social dynamics among people that undeniably lack access to suffi- who study it. The slum has its own social organization, standards of values, cient external goods and see whether Aristotle is correct in empha- expectations, normative behavior, moral order, and system of reward and sizing the correlation between favorable socio-economic condi- punishment. (2002, 6) tions and the achievement of happiness. For this purpose, I shall be utilizing Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a framework The slum is a world in itself, with its own way of seeing and inter- for examining slum life. Ethnographic and sociological data shall preting different realities. This world is a network of various beliefs, be sourced mainly from F. Landa Jocano’s seminal work, Slum as values, and ways of life that was mainly forged by strategic inter- a Way of Life: A Study of Coping Behavior in an Urban Environment ests that sought the most efficient ways of adapting to the givens (2002). of economic deprivation. Jocano says that “[s]lum dwellers are far Simply put, my aim is to investigate whether the external condi- from what most people say they are. They are far more pragmatic tions of poverty (specifically poverty in an urban setting) negate than scholars see them; more intelligent, calculating and psycholog- the possibility of human flourishing oreudaimonia . Without ically attuned to take advantage of changing conditions and avail- having to resort to the rationalistic aspect of Aristotle’s definition able opportunities which occur in their lifetime” (2002, 8). Given of happiness (which would inevitably resolve the issue in terms the fact that their context provides them with a marginalized form of formal ethical categories pertaining to the different kinds of of rationality that has translated into an unjustly limited horizon virtue that are potentially accessible to all human beings by virtue of economic possibilities in terms of social mobility, slum folk rely of rationality), is it possible for us to conceive of a way by which mostly on themselves for almost everything. In addressing needs excellence can remain a concretely achievable end for agents who ranging from basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter, confront seemingly impossible odds on a daily basis? Can there be, to utilities like water and electricity, residents abide by informal yet in other words, a different way of understanding the conditions for normative rules for behavior that allow them to survive and even the possibility of human flourishing, other than grounding it on flourish, despite extremely difficult and deprived circumstances. conscious practical reason? Laquian, as quoted by Alcazaren, points out, “They retain the traditional characteristics of rural life, communal solidarity, intensive Slum life: Informality and Community face-to-face dealings, groupings according to ethnic, kinship or Erhard Berner (1997, 22) notes that, “The urban poor have been economic ties, closed communication systems characterized by commonly associated with unemployment, shanties, overcrowding, localized gossip, strong ‘we feeling’ felt against the outside world.”2 filth, stink of uncollected garbage, lack or total absence of social There is a pronounced sense of solidarity which permeates every services, malnutrition and just about everything that makes life aspect of slum life. Slum life is governed by behavioral conventions miserable.” However, there is more to slum life than grime, crime, grounded on strategic communal cooperation. Since everyone’s on and desperation. The first step in securing any semblance of truth the same boat, as it were, everyone takes it upon himself/herself to to one’s opinion about urban poverty is to be aware of stereotypes guard against deportments divergent from informal rules of conduct we may have of the poor so that the phenomenon of slum life may that have locally proven to be effective in coping with problems be allowed to show itself from itself just as it shows itself from such as the scarcity of resources and inhuman living environments. itself, as Heidegger would say. Jocano explains: With thinkers like Rawls and Habermas, Western rationality has established the foundation of communal rule construction on 126 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 127 reasoned argumentation by all concerned. Ideally, ethical rules in openly discussed, where individual and family statuses are evaluated, and a community are more or less the product of structured, reason- where decisions are reached as to which information should be allowed to based procedures that calculate the advantages and disadvantages leak out or be withheld from the authorities. Information on local activ- of accepting the viability and reasonability of adopting certain ities or events, impending or ongoing, is likewise classified according to norms. In other words, in such a setting, concerned parties are whether or not the entire neighborhood should know about it. In other required to take an objective and detached perspective on a situa- words, the informal meetings in the street provide the people with ample tion and deliberate as if the rules that shall be taken up would be opportunities to know each other better—to know what each one is doing scrutinized for its universal validity by universal reason (a la Rawls’ and why. 3 (2002, 41–42) veil of ignorance). What is good is defined and legislated by reason and is therefore potentially valid for everyone (unless a clashing The narroweskinitas that snake their way around the make- rationality challenges its validity by submitting itself to the same shift shanties is the locus of ethical life in slums. The laws which discursive procedure). Such a procedure also requires participants permeate and structure one’s personal mores are governed by to formalize their agreements so as to legally and morally gain informal communal rules that preside over the streets. Evaluations legitimacy. That which is ethical and communally condoned as concerning the good and the just as interpreted for different situ- practical ways of pursuing happiness, therefore, is always defined ations that happen in and out of the community take place in within the synthetic bounds of reason and the reasonability of the wooden benches (bangkô) positioned in front of houses or sari-sari procedure serves as the basis of the normative appeal of a rule. stores, in the talipapa and in beauty salons or barbershops that In the context of slum life, however, the ethical, or that which serve as the tambayan of most slum folk. These places where people promotes happiness, is not exclusively promulgated by one’s spend most of their time hanging out serve as the repository of virtuous conscience, as if one’s autonomous notion of the good and public opinion concerning not just the trivial everyday occurrences the just transcended one’s specific and concrete standing in the in the community, but more importantly, they serve as the public community. Just as Aristotle opined, practical prudential judgment platform for the personal opinions of specific personality arche- of what one ought to do and how one ought to live is grounded on types about the moral import of the goings-on in the slums (e.g., one’s relative standing within the parameters of shifting temporal what would a sunog-bagà think of this issue, or how would a Waray contexts. In other words, while one’s ethical sense is not thoroughly handle this problem). These informal networks of communication determined by context by virtue of reason, human rationality, in saturate the streets with a somewhat ambiguous “feel” regarding making practical choices cannot just deny the existence of objective everything that goes on in the community. As Jocano states: circumstances that permeates practical deliberation. One cannot just sweep reality under the rug, so to speak. Objective structures The spatial proximity of people influences the intimacy of interaction of historicity always already influence behavior and decision even between them. This intimacy underlies the formation of a local worldview before one consciously pursues specific ways of being. In the case relative to a specific value or orientation. Values are developed through of urban slum communities, one’s way of life, including its ethical group interaction and are normally expressed in the manner in which content, is significantly shaped by informal rules that govern the people agree or disagree about specific things, beliefs and actions. Once a street (kalye). Jocano explains: common understanding of these things, beliefs, and actions is reached, they become important to the functioning of group life. They become constit- It can safely be said that life in Looban is actually defined in the street. Some uent elements of common ends and values toward which all members of people go to the streets to escape boredom at home or avoid domestic the group are oriented and in terms of which the life of the group is organ- problems; others, to do business. At any rate, this is where events are ized. (2002, 191) 128 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 129

Hence, for instance, if a particular person who is known to be and re-created by the ever-dynamic ebb and flow of life on the the sigà of a certain purok publicly declares a particular opinion streets. It is interesting that the lives that dialectically form and are about an issue, say perhaps, how the community ought to react formed by the rules of the street are, for the most part, absorbed to gossip pertaining to an impending demolition of a segment of in their own everyday lives without an explicit recognition of how the community inhabited mostly by thieves and gang members, this certain “feel” saturates their judgments and actions, especially he immediately consigns this opinion within the frame of a in regard to social and ethical behavior. reflexive understanding of himself that is thoroughly saturated by Slum inhabitants, in other words, do not consciously or a pre-reflexive comprehension concerning what an alpha male is formally pursue happiness, which in the case of slum life is largely expected to think and say about this particular issue, given the dependent on social harmonization. Slum folk, as described by history of the normative relation between this particular situa- Jocano, find themselves in situations where they negotiate how tion and his particular understanding of himself as the present they are to create and re-create the various meanings of social bearer of the tradition of alpha males that roamed his purok over texts (which include notions concerning the good life) for different the years. He does not, strictly speaking, “autonomously” form his contexts. Although happiness, as formally described by Aristotle own practical opinion about the situation, but on the contrary, his as rational fulfillment grounded on virtue, constitutes the proper particular role within a specific context or situatedness generates telos of any person, regardless of historicity, people who live in certain practical comportments for him. This convergence of the slums have to strategically navigate their way to this goal despite past, the present and the future that happens in the continuous the radical absence of external goods, which Aristotle had asserted sublimated interaction between persons that presently live in the to be essential. Living way below the acceptable standard of living, community and the past archetypal modes of character (and the slum folk rely on “feel” rather than reason in being virtuous. Virtue ethical virtues or faults that these characters correspondingly or excellence, in this context, is not abstractly defined in terms of represent) constitutes the “feel” or to use a different term, the one’s being a rational animal; instead, it is negotiated in terms of “pulse” of the street. Bourdieu (1997, 86) explains this point in his how one carries oneself and fulfills one’s historically designated role work, Outline of a Theory of Practice, “Since the history of the indi- within the social matrix in the face of common adversity. Virtue, vidual is never anything other than a certain specification of the then, becomes a function of practical reason, not so much in the collective history of his group or class, each individual system of sense of its ability to preserve one’s humanity, but for its ability to dispositions may be seen as a structural variant of all the other preserve one’s way of life even without consciously trying to (anal- group or class habitus, expressing the difference between trajec- ogous to Aristotle’s vision of a virtuous person, the phronimos, who tories and positions inside or outside the class.” Thehabitus shall through habit no longer has to deliberately aim for the mean, but be discussed at length in the next section. What is relevant for has in fact developed a predisposition toward it). us at this point is to see how patterns of social reproduction and Since most of the substantial issues that are deemed perti- frameworks of normative behavior must not be understood apart nent in the slums occur in a historically cyclical fashion (in view from their specific contexts. As Jocano (2002, 42) states, “individual of the fact that the roles/archetypes rarely change given the stag- acts are defined in terms of community norms.” All individual acts nancy of the social living conditions), perspectives concerning in the slums, be it seemingly trivial or explicitly significant with every aspect of the everyday grind of life, including discourses regard to one’s social standing in the community, observe and concerning happiness or fulfillment are more or less preserved by assimilate this so-called “pulse” of the street. Community norms the uninterrupted interactions between the inhabitants and their are not the product of overt and systematic discursive procedures place of residence. In other words, the so-called “feel” or the hazy engaged. Informal, yet normative rules are continuously created mixture between one’s assumed role in the looban or the pook and 130 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 131 the historical archetypal notions of excellence and happiness that The autonomy of the conscious will is always already circum- reside on the streets, somehow takes the form of a “homogenizing scribed by the tempo-historical conditioning of one’s very existence lifestyle.” But such an idea must not be interpreted as rigid and scle- as a social being. As such, meaningful, relevant, and transformative rotic in such a way that the inhabitants somewhat assume certain human agency takes for its point of departure the existence of this roles and dispositions without having any form of conscious and primordial dialectic between itself and the specific social, histor- rational assent. Rather, this “feel” for what promotes personal and ical, and cultural context it always already finds itself in. Such is communal happiness is something that always already saturates the philosophical foundation of Bourdieu’s seminal idea of the the inhabitants’ way of life, in the same manner that each life that habitus. He explains this concept as follows: moves within this frame always already contributes to the dynamism and legitimacy of the very frame that defines its way of life. The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the In order to clarify this idea of the “feel” for “excellence,” we turn to material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition) Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus. produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as The Habitus principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representa- The contemporary French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu devel- tions which can be objectively “regulated” and “regular” without in any way oped and utilized a conjunctive framework for understanding the being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals active relationship between social agents (the subject) and society without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery (the world/worlds). In an interview, Bourdieu says that, “In order to of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively capture the gist of social action, we must recognize the ontological orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a complicity, as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty suggested, between the conductor. (1977, 72) agent (who is neither a subject or a consciousness, nor the mere executants of a role or the “carrier” of a function) and the social Social agents, Bourdieu asserts, become pre-disposed toward world (which is never a mere “thing” even if it must be constructed particular forms of behavior by virtue of habitus—“structured as such in the objectivist phase of research)” (Wacquant 1996, 215). structuring structures” that equip agency with practical mastery The classical chasm created by transcendental philosophy must of a set of skills that are characteristically attuned to the exigen- be overcome by more sober and “realistic” methodologies that are cies embedded within the concrete demands of various situations more sensitive to the artificiality of the modernist conception of the that practically share the same language-game.5 An agent’s adap- subject-object bipolarity.4 The immanent construction of any form tation to social rules, whether formal or informal, does not occur of psycho-social framework by agents is by no means derived from mechanistically nor even consciously, but takes place within the a purely objective assessment of conditions that exist outside of the framework of dispositional complicity with the demands of objec- self. The constitutive elements that form the self invariably relate tive circumstances. The habitus, Bourdieu (1990, 56) writes, “is a with the social, historical, cultural, and ethical frames of under- spontaneity without consciousness or will, opposed as much to standing that it may have purported to have created and formu- the mechanical necessity of things without history in mechanistic lated ex nihilo. Hence, the symbolic orders of differentiation and theories as it is to the reflexive freedom of subjects ‘without inertia’ recognition that enable agents to know and manipulate the world in rationalist theories.” If social life is understood as collectively of objects may be interpreted as precisely by-products of a more orchestrated without a conductor, then behavioral strategies aimed primordial dialectic that always already conditions and grounds the toward social solidarity (or happiness) or whatever end, generate so-called ways of life that specific agents assume for themselves. recurring patterns of action that are not necessarily grounded 132 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 133 on intentionality. One’s way of life unconsciously participates in [P]re-perceptive anticipations, a sort of practical induction based on a perpetual play of metaphorical and analogical significations previous experience, not given to a pure subject, a universal transcendental occurring between mutually reinforcing yet different pre-reflexive consciousness. They are the fact of thehabitus as a feel for the game. Having dispositions in a given field.6 Thehabitus , adds Bourdieu, “is the the feel for the game is having the game under the skin; it is to master in source of these series of moves which are objectively organized as a practical way the future of the game. While the bad player is always off strategies without being the product or by-product of a genuine tempo, always too early or too late, the good player is the one who antici- strategic intention—which would presuppose at least that they pates, who is ahead of the game. Why can she get ahead of the flow of the are perceived as one strategy among other possible strategies” game? Because she has the immanent tendencies of the game in her body, (1977, 73). In other words, in all fields (academic, cultural, polit- in an incorporated state: she embodies the game. (Bourdieu 1998, 81) ical, economic), different ways of being are defined within specific matrices of meaning, which automatically infuse pre-reflexive When various agents, “with differentiated means and ends goals and stratagems to specific actions. according to their position in the structure of the field of forces,” To put it briefly, Bourdieu says that for the most part, the meet each other in specific contexts, they intuitively and imme- execution of social action, the acquisition of tastes, the forma- diately know their place within the structure of discursive or tion of habits, and the establishment of normative ethical claims non-discursive interactions (32). Players only become players when by different collectives all happen beyond objectively determi- they play the game, and for Bourdieu, everybody plays. Hence, nable processes of intentionality. He explains that, “Thehabitus , habitus functions both as a unifying and differentiating principle. the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisa- On the one hand, it is a “unifying principle which retranslates the tions, produces practices which tend to reproduce the regularities intrinsic and relational characteristics of a position into a unitary immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their lifestyle, that is, a unitary set of choices of persons, goods, prac- generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as tices” (8). On the other hand, they are also “distinction opera- objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cogni- tors, implementing different principles of differentiation or using tive and motivating structures making up the habitus” (73). Social differently the common principles of differentiation” (8). Given a agents simultaneously assimilate and reproduce social life sublim- specific communal context, agents are more or less homologized inally, yet are able to effectively project and comprehend systems by the field to act and think in certain ways about specific things. of meaning and valuation relevant to varying contexts. Because However, the principles of differentiation (evaluation/valuation) agency is “the product of a modus operandi of which he is not the remain the same, in as far as the specific modal dispositions that producer and has no conscious mastery, they contain an “objec- they originate are appropriated in different ways by different agents tive intention,” as the Scholastics put it, which always outruns his in accordance with their unique standing and interests within conscious intentions. The schemes of thought and expression he specific matrices of meaning within particular fields in a society. has acquired are the basis for the intentionless invention of regu- Different players play the same game differently at different times, lated improvisation” (73). as Gadamer would say. Bourdieu expounds: The habitus metaphorically defined as one’s feel for the game delivers the very essence of Bourdieu’s understanding of the Habitus are generative principles of distinct and distinctive practices—what dynamic relationship between objective structures and agency. For the worker eats, and especially the way he eats it, the sport he practices and him, when one has a feel for the game, one no longer thinks about the way he practices it, his political opinions and the way he expresses them oneself, the game itself, and even one’s relatedness to the game. are systematically different from the industrial owner’s corresponding activ- One simply plays the game. He explains: ities. But habitus are also classificatory schemes, principles of classification, 134 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 135

principles of vision and division, different tastes. They make distinctions which, conversely, are devoid of interest for those who are not tied to between what is good and what is bad, between what is right and what is that game and which leave them indifferent” (1998, 77–78). wrong, between what is distinguished and what is vulgar, and so forth but Most of us don’t understand, for instance, why slum folk insist the distinctions are not identical. Thus, for instance, the same behavior or on building their shanties in what most of us would consider even the same good can appear distinguished to one person, pretentious to danger zones, like riverbanks, sanitary landfills, and the under- someone else, and cheap or showy to yet another. (1998, 8) side of bridges, though government offers them residence in relatively safer relocation sites. In Bourdieu’s view, being invested in a Differing systems of dispositions or comportments are accom- particular game equips a player with certain normative presuppo- modated within the vast spectrum of intersecting fields or worlds sitions about the good life that translates into patterns of behavior, that cultivate, generate, and regenerate pre-existing and existing habits, and tastes. Once ossified by the gaze of an outsider, these ways of life in the world of the social. Applied for instance to social patterns constitute what we usually call stereotypes. However, interactions that take place in slums, there are popular interpre- Bourdieu argues that the habitus imbues agents with tendencies tations of informal yet normative codes of conduct and visions and dispositions that facilitate their functional position within of the good life that have been unconsciously embodied by the the matrix of the rules, the systems of reward and punishment, inhabitants, but such codes are differentiated in the way individ- etc. that animate the game and are also conversely substanti- uals assimilate them in view of their personal and specific inter- ated and legitimized by the game. This remains totally alienated ests that are only actionable within the communal habitus. In other from those of us who are outside the playing field, as it were. As words, Bourdieu places a greater degree of emphasis to the actual Nick Crossley elucidates, “Although fields are not hermetically practices or modus operandi generated by the habitus than toward sealed, their “players” nevertheless chase after goals and adhere its functional value of being a unifying principle of classification. to distinctions and norms that often strike the outsider, who does This modus operandi, otherwise known as the feel for the game not believe in the game or share its illusio, as peculiar and perhaps or sense of the game, “explains that the agent does ‘what she has to even meaningless” (Crossley 2001, 86). Hence, as far as those who do’ without posing it explicitly as a goal, below the level of calcu- are invested in the game are concerned, they act the way they do, lation and even consciousness, beneath discourse and representa- not so much because it is what they “think” is the “proper” way to tion” (Wacquant 1996, 218). Hence, for instance, actions performed act, but because these are the practical principles and modes of excellently relative to the goal of happiness, as hermeneutically action that are normatively legitimized within the context of their influenced by context, are products of “the objective homogenizing habitus. To go back to my example, the urban poor’s choice of resi- of group or class habitus which results from the homogeneity of the dence is not primarily a result of a deliberative process grounded conditions of existence which enables practices to be objectively on a universalizable rational principle, but rather is a function of a harmonized without any intentional calculation or conscious refer- very specificillusio relative to the field where their specifichabitus ence to a norm and mutually adjusted in the absence of any direct is legitimized. We can only surmise that apart from the common interaction or, a fortiriori, explicit co-ordination” (1997, 80). In addi- complaints we hear from slum folk who were enticed by govern- tion, Bourdieu says that every action or disposition by social agents ment to move to a more habitable environment (e.g., lack of liveli- is hinged upon a specificillusio . Illusio, Bourdieu explains is, “[T]he hood due to alienation from urban economy), slum dwellers choose fact of being invested, of investing in the stakes existing in a certain to squat in hazardous environments because “[t]he dispositions of game, through the effect of competition, and which only exist for habitus predispose actors to select forms of conduct that are most people who, being caught up in that game and possessing the dispo- likely to succeed in light of their resources and past experience. sitions to recognize the stakes at play, are ready to die for the stakes Habitus orients action according to anticipated consequences” 136 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 137

(Swartz 1997, 106). This choice, it appears, is made somewhat in capable of prudently transcending structural and objective condi- the spirit of Aristotelian mesotes, where cowardice and reckless- tions. Viewed from the perspective of Bourdieu’s idea of habitus, we ness are the extremes and as well as equal to courage in the face of must, as Camus did, imagine Sisyphus to be happy. great odds is the mean. However, this choice, according to Bourdieu was not made by conscious, autonomous, rational subjects, but is a Happiness Beyond Virtue result of the habitus, which “tends to generate all the ‘reasonable’, The particular value-orientations and ethical consciousness of ‘common-sense’, behaviours (and only these) which are possible specific character types (the tindera, the sigà, the baliw, the martir, within the limits of these regularities, and which are likely to be the pok-pok, the laborer, the lasenggo, the butangera, the mangu positively sanctioned because they are objectively adjusted to the ngutang, the kubrador, the balik-bayan)7 that populate slums are logic characteristic of a particular field, whose objective future products of daily interactions that regularly occur within similar they anticipate. At the same time, ‘without violence, art or argu- contexts. Regular informal gatherings and conversations that take ment’, it tends to exclude all ‘extravagances’ (‘not for the likes of place within specific social circles reinforce and reproduce the us’), that is, all the behaviors that would be negatively sanctioned same social reality that has existed in the slums for the longest time. because they are incompatible with the objective conditions” (1990, Probably unconscious of the social implications of these habits, the 55–56). Slum dwellers, therefore, find virtue in their suffering. In everyday mundane reality of slum life reproduces itself by virtue of fact, one can even say that most of them (those that are thor- the various agreements and disagreements about personal judg- oughly invested in the game) are excellent sufferers. This remark ments of daily social, political, economic, aesthetic, and ethical is of course not meant as an insult; nor is it parodic. As we have life in the slums. In these relaxed and free-flowing conversational learned from Bourdieu, strategies aimed toward the accumulation encounters, specific “slum-versions” of Filipino virtues like paki- of capital in a given field are not the work of conscious subjectivity, kisama, pagtanaw ng utang na loob, and hiya are implicitly discussed but are a function of the habitus. In other words, slum dwellers and embodied by various archetypal characters appropriated and gravitate toward values and beliefs that can guarantee versions of guised in anecdotal narratives that are specifically meaningful and excellence endemic within the ambit of their field and not those relevant to the different circles in which they assume their specific versions which transgress the limits of their objective conditions. relevance. According to Anthony King, “For Bourdieu, social agents As Swartz points out: are virtuosos who are not dominated by some abstract social principles but who know the script so well that they can elaborate and Habitus adjusts aspirations and expectations according to the objective improvise upon the themes which it provides and in the light of probabilities for success or failure common to the members of the same their relations with others” (King 2000, 419). In other words, be class for a particular behaviour. This is a “practical” rather than a conscious it wittingly or unwittingly, ethical norms that hold sway over the adjustment. . . . The dispositions of habitus predispose actors to select forms entire community are passed on, sustained, and reproduced by of conduct that are most likely to succeed in light of their resources and the different character types that “play the game” with their own past experience. Habitus orients action according to anticipated conse- very specific “feel” andillusio that they employ for the duration of quences. . . . Not all courses of action are equally possible for everyone; only the game. As the game progresses, the “feel for the game” develops some are plausible, whereas others are unthinkable. (1997, 105–7) along with it. Inscribed within the parameters of pre-reflexive agreement as regards the validity of the rules and principles of the Hence, excellence for the marginalized is marginal excellence. A game, unique dispositions are brought to bear upon the issues and conservative reading of the grand telos of Aristotelian eudaimonia principles that are deemed relevant or necessary with respect to is the dream of a philosophy, which views practical reason as the sustainability of playing the game. This is precisely the habitus 138 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 139 at work. As a generative principle, the habitus grounds and config- behavioral patterns in a given lifeworld is hence but a snapshot of ures the vast networks of discursive and non-discursive disposi- an otherwise on-going and ambiguous struggle for both personal tions into a coherent lifestyle. The distinctions operative within the and normative validation. The stress which Bourdieu places on system of differences of character types and their respective areas unconscious strategic improvisation is a function of his seminal of “expertise” work within the functional space afforded for them recognition that agents are always already just on their way to by the habitus itself, understood as a generative principle. The carrying out their respective pre-reflective tasks within a specific various systems of valuation and visions of the good life that have field. As Swartz explains, “There is an ongoing adaptation process been shaped and dialectically shape the habitus find its system- as habitus encounters new situations, but this process tends to be atic and “universal” base in the structural economy of meaningful slow, unconscious, and tends to elaborate rather than alter funda- and relational signs that operate within particular social spaces mentally the primary dispositions” (107). Primary dispositions as or discourses as well as the varying degrees of internalization that grounded on and guided by one’s habitus are in a perpetual process different agents or characters have acquired in the course of the of elaboration. Goals, values, and necessities are made up as one game. As Bourdieu (1977, 81) explains, “it is because they are the goes along. Meaningful teleological frames for practical action are product of dispositions which, being the internalization of the same always in transit, as it were. But they are in transit on a given set of objective structures, are objectively concerted that the practices of tracks, which invariably influence an agent’s trajectory concerning the members of the same group or, in a differentiated society, the what makes sense and what does not make sense for him/her to do same class are endowed with an objective meaning that is at once or not do in a given situation or the practicality of the things he/ unitary and systematic, transcending subjective intentions and she may aspire for. As Bourdieu expounds: conscious projects whether individual or collective.”8 Happiness, therefore, in the context of homogenized slum Social agents who have a feel for the game, who have embodied a host life is not a conscious goal, but is in fact, a residue of habitus. of practical schemes of perception and appreciation functioning as instru- Since agents are, for all intents and purposes, are simply playing ments of reality construction, as principles of vision and division of the the game, strategic and purposive actions are invested with universe in which they act, do not need to pose the objectives of their prac- non-subjective intentions which cannot transcend the bounda- tice as ends. They are not like subjects faced with an object (or, even less, ries of the game. In other words, the unconscious improvisations a problem) that will be constituted as such by an intellectual act of cogni- derived from the habitus are not generated from goals projected tion; they are, as it is said, absorbed in their affairs: they are present at the pre-factum. These so-called master-patterns which define and coming moment, the doing, the deed (pragma), the immediate correlate of regulate informal social norms and modes of conduct are always practice (praxis) which is not posed as an object of thought, as a possible already exclusively invested in what the game allows to unfold at aimed for in a project, but which is inscribed in the present of the game. the moment. Themodus operandi, the strategy, as Bourdieu refers (1998, 80) to it, “does not mean conscious choice or rational calculation. . . . Thus, choices do not derive directly from the objective situations in Bourdieu’s use of the word “embodiment” to signify an agent’s which they occur or from transcending rules, norms, patterns, and relation with his/her different modes of disposition toward the constraints that govern social life; rather, they stem from practical real, presents us with a novel perspective in understanding various dispositions that incorporate ambiguities and uncertainties that forms of social life, including life in slums. As Richard Jenkins emerge from acting through time and space” (Swartz 1997, 100). expounds, “It is in bodily hexis (manner and style in which actors The material and temporal objective conditions that permeate carry themselves: stance, gait, gesture, etc.) that the idiosyncratic strategic actions are in constant flux. The seeming regularity of (the personal) combines with the systematic (the social)” (Jenkins 140 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 141

1992, 75). Social agency is always already absorbed in its affairs. a perspective that sidesteps the recurring debate among culturalists and The virtuosity with which slum dwellers improvise and invent ways structuralists on the origins and perpetuating cycles of poverty. . . . Habitus of being happy despite their dismal situation must be interpreted transforms social and economic “necessity” into “virtue” by leading individ- as of kind dispositional acumen, which is neither formally learned uals to a “kind of immediate submission to order.” It legitimates economic nor procedurally accomplished. The excellence (or virtue) with and social inequality by providing a practical and taken-for-granted accept- which they negotiate for their survival is in fact a correlative of the ance of the fundamental conditions of existence. (1997, 104–5) forms of happiness that are forged, legitimized, and reproduced within the specific boundaries of their field. It is in the techniques This immediate submission to order must not be haphazardly by which they literally and figuratively carry themselves through interpreted as a form of irrational fatalism. Nor should the legiti- adversity that their happiness or fulfillment is produced and exhib- mization of economic and social inequality by the habitus be inter- ited. Their virtue is realized, not in their ability to roll the rock preted as an estrangement from the undeniably real consequences uphill, as it were, but in their immediate, yet unconscious grasp of socio-economic deprivation. What Bourdieu tries to show is of the situation they are in. Unlike Sisyphus, whose salvation came that self-fulfilling prophecies are instances of perfect complicity in the form of reflexivity, slum life, viewed from the perspective of between habitus, field, and illusio. Immediate submission to order the habitus, enables agents to non-reflexively be the rock, thereby grants and galvanizes an agent’s chances at fulfillment. The spec- nullifying the possibility of conscious anguish. This, in my opinion, tacle of poverty with which most of us are familiar, once exam- is what makes happiness possible in slums. Their smiles—those ined from a Bourdieusian perspective is revealed to be radically that we see in photographs and documentaries are not Sisyphusian different from how people that are actually poor reckon their situ- smiles; but smiles that are, strictly speaking, inaccessible to those ation. The durability, flexibility, and inter-generational character of who can afford pity. It is a smile which is not for the camera, but practical dispositions which commit themselves to a given field is for its own sake. Their happiness cannot be evaluated from outside directly related to the informal communal understandings of the the ambit of their field. Eudaimonia, framed within the context of good life that place particular agents within particular horizons of habitus is love of one’s fate. This amor fati unconsciously submits possibilities suited for their pre-reflexively constructed roles within itself to the demands and vicissitudes of objective structures that the lifeworld. Happiness, from the perspective of the habitus, is not require virtue (excellence) from those who are currently engaged in an explicit goal which calls for the conscious application of prac- the game. Collusion between agent and structure, self and world, tical wisdom in various situations. It is the function of an agent’s personal and social, resident and residence, happens as a matter of excellence in improvising strategies that cohere with objective course. It is never planned or contrived. As Swartz explains: necessity. Viewed in this manner, it can therefore be said that, indeed, the poor can be happy. Just not always in the way we would Habitus, then, represents a sort of deep-structuring cultural matrix that imagine or wish them to be. As a sociological and philosophical generates self-fulfilling prophecies according to different class opportuni- tool for investigation, Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus opens up ties. And Bourdieu’s “cultural” explanation of unequal educational attain- the possibility of understanding how informal, ambiguous, and ment differs from the blaming-the-victim version of culture-of-poverty non-reflexive norms permeate and structure our various concep- arguments in emphasizing individuals’ adaptation to limited opportunities tions of the good life and the strategies that we deem to be neces- rather than the cultural origins of deviant behaviour. It shows how struc- sary in achieving them. This relation, however, is not grounded on tural disadvantages can be internalized into relatively durable dispositions logical necessity, but on unconscious improvisation—the progeny that can be transmitted intergenerationally through socialization and of a perfect marriage between agency and structure, residency and produce forms of self-defeating behaviour. Bourdieu’s habitus thus offers residence, intentionless invention and practical necessity. 142 Eudaimonia in the Margins MARC OLIVER D. PASCO 143

Endnotes the class-specific experiences of socialization in family and peer groups” (cf. 1. In 2018, “The Philippines has emerged as one of the happiest countries in the Swartz 1997, 101–2). world, according to a global survey by US-based firm Gallup International. 6. Bourdieu explains the relationship between habitus and field as such: “It is Gallup’s 41st Annual Global End of Year Survey shows the Philippines ranking the double and obscure relation between habitus, that is, the durable and 3rd happiest country in the world, with a net score of +84.” See: http://news. transposable system of schemata of perception, appreciation and action that abs-cbn.com/focus/01/02/18/ph-third-happiest-country-in-the-world-gal- result from the institution of the social in the body, and fields, that is, systems lup-survey. of objective relations which are the product of the institution of the social in 2. Alcazaren, Ferrer, and Icamina 2011, 65. things, or in mechanisms that have the quasi-reality of physical objects; and, 3. Continued from Slum as a Way of Life (Jocano 2002, 41–42): I personally grew of course, of everything that is born out of this relation, that is, social prac- up around slums in Marikina. Though I didn’t live there, our home was a tices and representations, or fields as they present themselves in the form of stone’s throw away from what is still known as “Babuyan Island,” a narrow es- realities perceived and appreciated” (Wacquant 1996, 217). kinita known for having an open firelitsunan . Most of my friends growing up In addition, “Field denotes arenas of production, circulation, and appro- were sons and daughters of our sapateros and mag-aareglos (we had a small priation of goods, services, knowledge, or status, and the competitive posi- shoe factory), tricycle drivers, jueteng kubradors, sari-sari store owners, and tions held by actors in their struggle to accumulate and monopolize these cockpit arena personnel. These shanties surrounding the San Roque Cockpit different kinds of capital. Fields may be thought of as structured spaces that Arena, with their narrow, half muddy streets were my stomping grounds in are organized around specific types of capital or combinations of capital” the late 1980s and early 1990s. I find Jocano’s description quite accurate espe- (Swartz 1997, 117). cially with respect to how space is utilized in the community. There are hardly 7 While I do not claim that character stereotypes like the tindera, the sigà, the any explicitly noticeable boundaries between what is yours and what is mine, baliw, the martir, the pok-pok, the laborer, the lasenggo, the mangungutang, as it were, and the people treated the eskinita as an extension of their living the kubrador, the balik-bayan, exclusively appear in the slum communities (I room, hosting parties, wakes, wedding receptions, and baptismal receptions. am sure they are present anywhere in the social hierarchy), my own experi- Growing up with friends from these areas gave me a very colorful childhood, ence has shown me that these personalities have a pronounced presence in oftentimes pushing me to the limits of my highly conservative, middle-class communities where reputation play a big part in issues concerning pakikisa- upbringing. I was treated like family in their houses and to a great extent I ma and hiya. absorbed their ethos up until now. This paper is actually an attempt to philo- 8 Yet, Bourdieu is quick to qualify that, “the fact that schemes are able to pass sophically reflect on this part of my life, owing much to the friendships that from practice to practice without going through discourse or consciousness greatly molded me into who I am today. Growing up with peers who barely does not mean that acquisition of the habitus comes down to a question of had anything and seeing them as happy as they were left a mark in my philo- mechanical learning by trial and error” (1977, 87–88). Bourdieu adamantly sophical memory, which then prompted me to embark on this research. holds that the historical resilience of habitus is not due to the conscious effort 4. “For Bourdieu, classical social theory is characterized by an opposition be- of agents that may have an interest in preserving particular ways of life. The tween subjectivist and objectivist approaches. Subjectivist viewpoints have effectiveness of various behavioral dispositions is not measured by empirical as their center of gravity the beliefs, desires and judgments of agents and calculation (trial and error), but is dynamically adapted to changing objective consider these agents endowed and empowered to make the world and act conditions in a given field. according to their own lights. By contrast, objectivist views explain social thought and action in terms of material and economic conditions, social References structures, or cultural logics. These are seen as superordinate to, and more Alcazaren, Paulo, Luis Ferrer, and Benvenuto Icamina. 2011. Lungsod Iskwater: powerful than, agents’ symbolic constructions, experiences, and actions” (cf. The Evolution of Informal as a Dominant Pattern in Philippine Cities. Manda- Calhoun, Postone, and LiPuma 1993, 3). luyong City: Anvil Publishing. 5. David Swartz notes that, “Bourdieu has also used the wording ‘cultural un- Aristotle. 1998. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by WD Ross. Oxford: Oxford conscious,’ ‘habit forming force,’ ‘set of basic, deeply interiorized master-pat- University Press. terns,’ ‘mental habit,’ ‘mental and corporeal schemata of perceptions, appre- Berner, Erhard. 1997. Defending a Place in the City: Localities and the Struggle ciations, and action,’ and ‘generative principle of regulated improvisations for urban land in Metro Manila. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University . . .’ In addition, Swartz notes that,“Habitus is not an innate capacity, such as Press. the physical operation of the brain posited by Levi-Strauss or the mentalis- Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977.Outline of a Theory of Practice. Richard Nice, trans. Cam- tic outlook of Chomsky. Habitus is a ‘structured structure’ that derives from bridge: Cambridge University Press. 144 Eudaimonia in the Margins

GARY C. DEVILLES ———. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Richard Nice, trans. Stanford: Stanford Uni- versity Press. ———. 1998. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford: Stanford Uni- versity Press. Calhoun, Craig. Moishe Postone and Edward LiPuma. 1993. “Introduction: Bourdieu and Social Theory,” In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives, edited by Sensing and Seeing Calhoun Craig, Moishe Postone, and Edward LiPuma. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Crossley, Nick. 2001. “The Phenomenological Habitus and Its Construction.” Metro Manila Theory and Society 30 (1): 81–120. Web. 15 Jan. 2014. Jenkins, Richard. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge. Jocano, F. Landa. 2002. Slum as a Way of Life: A Study of Coping Behavior in an Urban Environment. Quezon City: PUNLAD Research House. King, Anthony. 2000. “Thinking with Bourdieu against Bourdieu: A ‘Practical’ Critique of the Habitus.” Sociological Theory 18 (3): 417–33. Web. 15 Jan. 2014. Sensing Metro Manila Swartz, David. 1997. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chica- GROWING UP IN METRO MANILA in the seventies in its go: Chicago University Press. southern suburban part, I have often been morbidly fascinated by Wacquant, Loïc J. D. 1996. “Toward a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu,” In Social Theory and Sociology: The Classics and Beyond. the clear-cut difference between the rich and the poor, the gated Stephen Turner, ed. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers. communities and the squatters, and the central business district against the long queue of small and neighborhood shops. The disparity is hardly inconspicuous especially for commuters who travel from one city to another or from the barrios to the center, and when I was studying in a Jesuit university in Quezon City, commuting would take about three to four jeepney rides, roughly two to three hours one way. I remember that if I had an 8:00 am class, I would wake up around 4:00 am and then in half an hour must be able to catch my rides. Despite the difficulties, these rides made me a keen observer of my surroundings, and I realized that these rides helped me socialize and talk to co-passengers and drivers. The jeepney is still our public transport today, and its two long parallel benches somehow makes it a virtual social space where one cannot avoid facing other passengers to talk about everyday things, from the prices of commodities to crimes in neighborhood, national scandals, and politics. The long ride from my place to the school made me wonder at times why there were few people in some places and so many in others. From Taguig City, I would go to Pasig and then to Marikina, and finally to Quezon City, roughly about 30 kilometers. Passing through four cities, jeepney rides

145 146 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 147

and I told him I didn’t have a phone. He was surprised that I had no phone, but I was more stunned by him for not knowing a lot like us could not afford phones. We inhabited the same space in our school, yet we came from different worlds. My classmates would not be bothered by public transport strikes because they all had their own cars, and they could accomplish group homework over their phones. At that time, when there were few telephone lines, phones were like indicators of class and privilege. I realized that my university was like the bigger Filipino society with its rich and poor students, social stratification, and class segregation. All these experiences, from my daily commute to my observation of different lifestyles, and my schooling, would eventually draw me to studies of alienation in philosophy and literature that were compellingly rich in understanding human displacement, the problem of isolation, and all the disparity in human existence. Fig.1. Philippine Jeepney I am particularly drawn to a short story of Pedro S. Dandan Source: Author (1996), “May Buhay sa Looban” (There is Life in the Slums), which prompted me to study its depiction of urban space. My interest in urban space is inspired by the story’s dramatization of the afforded me a vision of Metro Manila, a way of sensing the incon- conflicting views about looban (or slums), and its resonance with gruity of cities that somehow stemmed back to the most funda- my own. The story is about a boy whose family decided to move mental contradiction of everyday living. to the city. The boy could not let go of his friends and attachment Going to school, commuting has been my real education, my to looban that for his father, who was a writer and keen on joining way of sensing Manila, my world. One lesson I would never forget the Commonwealth Literary Prize, was ugly, filthy, dead, and bereft was the global economic crisis in the late eighties. Inflation was of any inspiration. The father’s disgust of looban was something an abstract economic term for a student like me then, but when the boy could not accept because for him, his life, childhood, and jeepney drivers all over the country held a general strike, I learned memory were all intertwined with it--hence, the title of the story, what inflation meant by walking 30 kilometers back home, under which literally means that there was indeed life in the slums. the glaring sun and on searing asphalt roads. Public commuters Looking back, I was like that boy in the story who felt that there usually were the first to understand oil price hike, wars in the was something more about the place. Looban for the boy was not Middle East, and national economic crises because these events, just the slum but his whole being, including his imagination, and no matter how seemingly remote, were always felt within and his friends. The interesting part of the story is that it was the father, became part of daily living. the writer, who failed to see looban for what it really is. The father is It was odd that the university where I studied could be oblivious like anyone nowadays who has forgotten that looban used to func- from what was going on around the world. Most of my classmates tion similarly to a backyard or a garden and as such, functioned were rich and middle-class, and so my being on scholarship meant as a place for respite. But somehow, the height of urbanization of a peculiar feeling of isolation from them. I remember one group Manila in the seventies made everyone forget what a looban is and work in my class when my classmate asked for my contact details, what it possibly connotes as an interior, the internal dimension, 148 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 149 or the inside. The father’s failure to seelooban mirrors his inability appropriation. For this chapter, I would like to discuss one sense, to see his son’s feelings. Thus, the story for me became an arche- the sense of seeing Metro Manila, the politics of Metro Manila’s typal story for a lot of people who were displaced, alienated, and representation and depiction, the asymmetrical relations of its violated. It became a complex articulation of the spatiality of our people, and the creative strategies employed by people under an human existence, our ironic experience of displacement, and our oppressive surveillance culture. I study two Filipino indie films, desire to make sense of it. Serbis and Tribu, and the novel-turned-into-film Maynila sa mga Edward Soja explained that making sense of one place is an act Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Light, 1970). of embracing spatialities, a strategic awareness of the collectively Using these indie films, I argue the problematic visibility of created spatiality and its social consequences that became a vital Manila, as the depiction of Manila’s poverty becomes pornographic part of making both theoretical and practical sense of our contem- due to uneven geopolitical relationship between the viewers and porary life worlds at all scales, from the most intimate to the most the Filipinos being viewed. I trace this kind of invisibility with the global (1996, 1). Making sense of one’s place is indeed embracing problems of modernity and modernization as the characters in the spatiality, understanding, and making the place as one’s own or novel Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag find themselves trapped, loob, cognizant that such place can be taken away, or nilooban. unable to survive, and thereby reconcile with their love interests Hence, even though the word looban was used to refer to squat- in an urban jungle like Manila. I rework the concept of alienation ters and dirt, the residents of looban had always claimed otherwise. in the novel and argue how such alienation is very much part of They insisted that they were not the dirt or outsiders, but rather city’s modernity, how the characters maintain a critical vision of the “real” insiders, hence taga-looban or the ones who dwelled Manila, and how in the end they become the embodied contra- inside. Looban residents according to sociologist Edhard Berner diction, culminating in their death or escape from the city. This would always adjust to their place and that despite the noise and novel which was turned into a film in 1970 was digitally remas- dirt, would claim such places as their own (1997, 125). tered and shown in 2013 Cannes Film Festival. The success of this In Tondo, in the western district of Manila, for instance, there film and the novel itself gives us a fitting opportunity to look at was in fact a squatters’ area called hapilan which meant garbage, Manila as depicted in the novel and the film in the seventies. It is but its residents called or pronounced the place instead as happy also an opportunity for us to try to contextualize such seeing in land, which sounded similar, but obviously suggested a far different the eyes of contemporary viewers today. Seeing Manila in the film meaning from the garbage associated with them. “Happy land” or the novel, moreover, provides a vantage point in assessing city evoked a more playful or imaginative meaning and they called the visibility, as visibility always implicates its contemporary viewers. place as such even if it was filthy. The heap of garbage, in fact, was their livelihood, and they had lived and raised their family through Seeing Metro Manila in Lino Brocka garbage collection and recycling. The place was therefore not just They say that the downfall of the Marcos regime in 1986 could hapilan or waste land, but a happy land, a place with their family, be attributed to the construction of the 33-km elevated railway co-workers, and friends. system that ran from north to south of Manila. For the first time, a By the same token, sensing or seeing my place, Metro Manila, year before the famous EDSA revolution that toppled the dictator, will be an attempt to make meaning that comes from that aware- passengers bound from Baclaran to Monumento, could get a top ness of differences and a commitment to connect personal experi- view of the deteriorating condition of Manila. I was in second year ences with the political, all in the context of the spatiality of human of high school when the EDSA Revolution happened and although condition, whether this is my own space of alterity, a violent space I was young then, most of us, my classmates and friends, had a of colonization or dispersal, or the very space of reclamation and sense already that something was wrong in our country. It was in 150 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 151 my senior year that I was given the chance to go to Manila to watch viewers as well. His first film,Wanted: Perfect Mother (1970), was Hamlet at the historic Metropolitan Theatre, take a ride in metro loosely based on The Sound of Music (1965). Even though this movie rail, and see for the first time the stretch of Manila, from Central was an adaptation, one could see already his genius in adapting Station to Pedro Gil, to Taft Avenue and EDSA. I saw a Manila that foreign material by using familiar locations and believable char- had been confirmed by my readings of stories and poems about acters speaking in their local language. In Wanted: Perfect Mother, working class Filipinos, as well as by movies banned and censored Brocka added the dimension of the conflict between the daughter which also became available only during my senior year. I saw a and her stepmother, something that is seemingly a staple with Manila teeming with people: I had to run and squeeze my way Filipino melodramas. Brocka knew his audience, and he tried to to cramped coaches, I had to elbow some people, and then while make his film relatable and understandable. Even though his first inside the train, I had to mind my bag and wallet, as I had been film was an adaptation of a romantic foreign film, one could see warned of pickpockets everywhere. Never had I been so alert in already some strand of Brocka’s realism, and this realism would be my life that I felt that Manila was the most dangerous place for more apparent as it gradually became clearer for Brocka that film me as a student. could be a tool for his political advocacy. It is this kind of Manila that I saw that I want to talk about. It is In 1974, he directed Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, which is the Manila that was depicted in the movies of the late Lino Brocka, considered by many critics to be the greatest Filipino film. This was imagined in the novel, Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag by Edgardo M. followed by films likeInsiang (1978) which was the first Philippine Reyes, and which today is evoked in the indie films of Brillante film shown at the Cannes Film Festival, then Jaguar (1979) which Mendoza and Jim Libiran. Seeing Manila as depicted in the films was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1980 Cannes Film and novels gives us a critical sense not only of Manila, but also of Festival and then two years after, with his third entry, Bona (1981), ourselves. However, seeing Manila in some films can also perpet- as Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight. In most of these films, Brocka is uate the same violence of concealment; hence, instead of offering consistent in portraying the stories of working class, with Julio as critical visuality, this concealment may degenerate to mindless a migrant worker from the city (Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag), display of excess and become pornographic. Insiang as a rape victim (Insiang), and Bona as an obsessive fan It is important for me to start with Lino Brocka’s depiction of (Bona). These characters resonated powerfully with Filipino audi- Manila since growing up in the seventies during the Marcos dicta- ences because the stories were theirs, given that most moviegoers torial regime meant stringent censorship of any films critical of the were also common low wage earners. In effect, Brocka succeeded government, especially films like that of Lino Brocka’s that depicted in letting them see their own stories through his characters. the poverty and wretched living conditions in Manila. I have seen By choosing to depict his characters’ stories, Brocka was at the poverty in Manila, but never have I seen or watched films or TV forefront of defining realism in film production. He veered away from programs that were critical of poverty in the country. I remember mainstream romantic stories of the bourgeoisie or middle class and watching old shows and reruns that seemed to evoke a glorified tried without fail to present how typical romance becomes illusory pastoral past of Manila, where there were still lush and green, and and alienating in their lives: Julio’s search for his girlfriend ended actors were singing kundiman, or our traditional love songs. When in both their tragic deaths; Insiang drove her mother mad killing we saw films of Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, and Malou Abaya in her stepfather; lastly, Bona eventually killed the actor she adores. In my senior high school, I never realized that films could be that Brocka’s films, realism is the depiction of the tragic lives of working disturbing. class; his works portray how the poor struggle, eke out a living, and Lino Brocka is one of the Philippines’ finest directors whose pursue dreams only to meet their tragic endings. With such endings films made Manila visible not only to us but to the international for Brocka’s films, realism becomes the antithesis of a romantic 152 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 153 movie, where, for example, a poor lady meets her rich handsome man and they end up happily as though love conquers all. In contrast, in a typical Brocka film, such a relationship is portrayed as downright deceptive, and love among other forms of socialization leaves the poor more wretched and alienated. Meanwhile, the rich are oftentimes depicted as extravagant, foolish, and self-absorbed. For Brocka, characters are to be portrayed in any actual aspect of life with their specific actions and consequences. What would an ordinary worker do if he were desperate for money to pay the hospital bill of his pregnant wife? In Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (This Is My Country), such a worker becomes a robber who is pursued by the police and dies. For Brocka, his characters are always caught in an ethical dilemma, and since these characters are related to their social status and their own past, their decision, temperament, and motive become more intricate, as they move and create the story’s plausibility. They therefore produce a powerful cathartic response from the same working-class audience. Fig.2. Lino Brocka Aside from strong character development, Brocka’s mise- Source: Rizal Library Photo Collection en-scène allows the audience to get a sense of the landscape of Manila’s poverty. Brocka’s opening close-up shot of Manila already contextualizes and captivates the viewers, as though telling them or garbage dumps, Brocka depicts a realistic Manila, dark and that what they are seeing is very much like their reality, or close sinister. Brocka, in fact, used real slums in Manila such as Tondo, to their reality. The use of Manila’s streets, for instance, is far from Pasay, Pasig, and Caloocan with residents acting as extras. One can the romantic style of postwar films, usually set up in provinces, in recognize Misericodia Street in Quiapo, the china town in Binondo, the fields, and along the rivers, places that evoke the serene, simple and Ermita, the red light district area of Manila. These are real and life and the imminence of man with nature. With Brocka’s opening familiar places, notorious for pickpockets, prostitution, gambling, shots of Manila streets and slums, his films expose immediately burglary, and crime. Long-shot scenes of Manila often establish a the connections between the viewers and the objects of their view. landscape providing the audience a glimpse of the extent of the In Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, we see street sweepers at wretchedness of their conditions. Most of the scenes were also shot the break of dawn, then the old dilapidated buildings, the vendors, at night giving a very bleak impression of Manila. the passersby, and then a long shot of the main road gradually Brocka’s realism is quite similar to the realism in the TV series, zeroing in toward Julio who is standing on a corner near a poster The Wire with its rich complexity built on narrative and conver- that says workers are on strike. The opening scenes already capture sational digressions, extended periods of seeming stasis, and an the gist of story by setting up Julio in his environment, by depicting affection for the quotidian. Hsu analyses how a TV series can him as though he is lost in the crowd, looking for something or aspire toward some condition of documentary truth, as in the someone, while the bleakness of the surrounding suggests the case of The Wire, which provides its audience a sense of unfiltered tragedy that awaits him. By using scenes of the everyday whether experience of life in Baltimore with its urban turmoil (2010, 509). in small factories, old and dilapidated buildings, makeshift houses, The strength of such TV series in aspiring for truth relies not only 154 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 155 on its aesthetics, but also on the structural social condition of the nominated for the Palme d’Or. Some of his other notable works viewers, at a time when the media text is being viewed, used, and such as Orapronobis had to be secretly smuggled out of the country appreciated. Hsu noted that in the case of The Wire, some real to avoid government censorship. Film critic Rolando Tolentino crooks were doing what they had seen on TV such as damping discussed how Brocka’s films such as Bayan Ko and Orapronobis one’s phone to avoid surveillance. Brocka’s realism as a truth- reflected the national political turmoil during the Marcos dicta- telling device is further understandable as political advocacy in a torship and continued during the Aquino administration (2001, time of dictatorship, when truth is always something that the state 31–42). conceals and represses. Brocka’s Manila is therefore political. Brocka’s Manila was antithetical to the true, the good, and the By depicting Manila in its sordid condition, Brocka’s films chal- beautiful Manila that Imelda Marcos wanted to portray. In 1975, lenged the state’s propaganda of Manila as the City of Man. In this Imelda Marcos was installed as governor of Metro Manila, while way we can understand Brocka as a political-activist director who also holding the office of the first Metro Manila Development believed that in as much as films can be instruments of state prop- Authority or MMDA. The latter was established for the sole purpose aganda, they can also be utilized to enlighten viewers against the of creating Metro Manila as a legitimate political unit to super- state and even the capitalists who own these films. For Brocka, vise the urban renewal programs of all the cities in the Manila. enlightenment comes not in idealizing one’s alienation, but with Moreover, it was not accidental that the role of governor landed on the recognition of man’s destruction as he is caught in the endless the president’s wife. Imelda herself rationalized her role as governor grip of the oppressive hands of the state and capitalism. In Maynila in terms of housekeeping and beautifying Metro Manila. With the sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, the last scene freezes to Julio as he ends combined powers of the president and his wife, they institutional- up in a no-through alley and people are chasing him for the crime ized the production of the arts and other popular media, building he committed. Brocka dramatizes the last scene with slow motion the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1969 and the Manila Film and close ups of Julio as he feared for his life, gave up, and cried. Center in 1982 that initiated the series of Manila International Film In Bayan Ko, we see Luz with her dead husband Arturo, looking at Festivals. These edifices and the beautification projects promoted all the photographers taking their pictures. In Orapronobis (Fight the country to the world and helped Manila become spectacularly for Us, 1989), the ex-priest rebel, Jimmy, calls a friend to tell him visible. It also helped that the Marcoses controlled the media firms he’s ready again to go underground. In all these films, more impor- such as Channel 4, Channel 9, and Channel 13, as well as Channel 2 tantly, Brocka was consistent in portraying a political Manila where which they seized from the oligarchic Lopez family. News, film, and the state was repressive. Brocka’s involvement in politics was not TV programs in all these channels then were all about the progress limited to his craft, however. of the country, specifically Manila. In 1974, theMs. Universe Beauty In 1983, Brocka created the organization Concerned Artists of Pageant was held for the first time in Manila, and before this show, the Philippines (CAP), which he led for two years. His position was police rounded up all the street children in the streets and a white that artists were first and foremost citizens and, as such, must wall was erected to cover the slum area visible to anyone going to address the issues confronting the country. His group became Manila from the airport. active in anti-government rallies after the assassination of Benigno Marcos’s beautification or gentrification program was funded Aquino, Jr., eventually becoming one of the progressive organiza- by massive foreign borrowing in the seventies, and Manila was a tions representing artists and cultural workers in the country. The haven for US Fordist economic policies that aided Manila’s urbani- following year, Bayan Ko was deemed subversive by the government zation, modernization, construction of public roads, buildings, and of Ferdinand Marcos, and underwent a legal battle to be shown in centers (Harvey 2006, 14–146; Graham 2006, 50–52). With various its uncut form. At the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, however, it was construction projects, critics of Marcos branded him as someone 156 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 157

can be unappealing due to its “cold” appearance, such building design projected an atmosphere of totalitarianism consistent with Marcos administration. Through all these buildings, Marcos showcased a Manila that is orderly, peaceful, and progressive. However, in as much as these buildings communicated a beautiful Manila from the outside, the view from inside in these buildings themselves reveals the uneven development of the city, as high-rise buildings provide a landscape of disparity between the rich and the poor in their surrounding areas. While Manila was being propagated by the state as progressive, it was also revealing its dark, ugly side. Manila’s population in the seventies bloomed and squatting problems became a major concern. Today, it is estimated that Manila alone has 20 million residents, almost the entire population of Australia. Such development of Manila shows deep cleavages in Philippine society (Caoili 1988, 62). It is this kind of division in society that became a constant theme for films, while Manila’s underdeveloped areas and ghettos became their basic setting. Brocka’s Manila, insofar as it challenged the state’s sanctioned Fig.3. Cultural Center of the Philippines image of Manila, can also be understood within the context of Source: Rizal Library Photo Collection geopolitics. Incidentally, Brocka’s prominence in international film festivals coincided with the emergence of Third World Cinema with an edifice complex, an irrational need to construct buildings coming from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These films fore- and monuments to display his power, virility, and his champi- grounded the historical encounters with colonial and imperial oning of progress and modernity (Lico 2003, 5). Some of the finest forces that shaped their economic and political power structures hospitals and buildings like the Philippine Heart Center (1975) and as evidenced by films likeAfrique, Je Te Plumerai (Africa, I Will the Cultural Center of Philippines complex (1969) were built to Fleece You) by Jean-Marie Téno, In Search of Famine by Aakaler communicate precisely the image of progress and new society or in Sandhane, and Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra the state’s parlance, Bagong Lipunan (New Society). Leandro Locsin do Sol) by Glauber Rocha (Shohat and Stam 1994, 248–3). Though was commissioned to design the Cultural Center of the Philippines Brocka did not consider himself to belong to Third World Film and the Philippine International Convention Center (1976); he aesthetics, Brocka’s underlying political motivation and message also designed these buildings using an architectural style known in the end is in line with other issues that Third World Cinema as Brutalist architecture, a style that flourished from the fifties was addressing at that time, during the dominance of commercial to the mid-seventies, spawned from the modernist architectural movies that were illusory and highly ideological. movement. These buildings are typically linear, fortress-like and Third World Cinema’s role was to subvert cinematic codes, blockish, often with a predominance of concrete construction. It is embrace revolutionary ideals, and combat the passive film-watching said that most government buildings, low-rent housing, and shop- experience of mainstream cinema. These films became a militant ping centers followed this architectural design. Though such style practice parallel with revolutionary struggles, produced with the 158 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 159 intention of provoking discussion with and amongst its viewers had been commercially successful since they often display not the and proposing alternative visions of the past, present, and future. acting prowess of stars but their nude exposure, giving rise to a Third World cinema and Brocka’s films remained true to this prin- film genre called Bomba pictures (loosely translated as “the sexual ciple of questioning and challenging the structures of power and bomb”) or skin flicks. One of the most prominent sexy actresses in oppression, as well as educating those who live under and must this period was Alma Moreno, who starred in films with provoca- struggle against its domination. Brocka’s dark and ugly Manila tive titles, like Mrs. Eva Fonda, 16, Bakit Ako Mahihiya (Why Should as portrayed in his films provided the international audience of I Be Ashamed, 1976), Hinog sa Pilit (The Adult Kid, 1976),Walang these film festivals a way to understand international relations, the Karanasan (Inexperienced, 1976), Mga Bilanggong Birhen (Virgin role of US in financing Third World countries during the cold war, Prisoners, 1977) and Bomba Star (1978). and the unevenness of city development resulting to a landscape Most of these sexy commercial Filipino movies exploited the of disparity between the few rich and the poor majority. Neferti romantic Cinderella theme, where a poor girl meets her rich lover Xina Tadiar explains how the Asia-Pacific region in the seventies who saves her from misery. In some movies, a typical revenge motif (that includes the Philippines) functioned as a locus of contain- adds texture to the story where a poor woman, abused by her neigh- ment of the threat the region posed to the dominant powers that bors and family, comes back with a vengeance against her former benefited from its promotion (2004, 33–5). She contends that with tormentors as a rich lady. It was quite apparent in these films that the Vietnam War and other anti-imperialist revolutionary strug- the focus was not the visual depiction of poverty, but rather the gles being waged in Southeast, the Asia-Pacific region emerged as narrative story of a poor woman who can capitalize on her sexuality a threat to the global power of the United States. Like Third World as a way out of misery. Such films did not elicit the kind of crit- Cinema, Brocka’s films revealed this dark and sinister side of global ical catharsis that most Brocka’s films tried to evoke visually and politics and US hegemony over countries like the Philippines. intellectually, but rather the kind of sexual gratification that comes only pornographically with frontal nudity, sexual encounters, and Seeing Metro Manila in Indie Films kissing scenes. As these films became more popular, the depiction of Despite Brocka’s perceived revolutionary and progressive poverty in mainstream cinema became a form of gratuitous display, agenda in depicting Manila, poverty depiction was also something exploiting not only women’s bodies, but also the very condition of that First World Cinema unquestionably exploits by portraying the poverty that subjected these women. Audiences somehow became poor as heroes who can surmount any struggle and be successful instant voyeurs, reinstating instead of dismantling the asymmet- in life. Such was the lure of mainstream cinema, where it depicted rical relationship between viewers and the objects of view, as well the lives of poor and oppressed characters. Most of these charac- as shaping the very way of viewing the signs of poverty. ters were stereotypes, and plots were oftentimes formulaic. The politics of viewing also had to be examined through Film critics Shohat and Stam discuss the difference between the insidious and uneven way that International Film Festivals First World and Third World cinema’s depiction of poverty, pointing exhibited films across the globe while geopolitics was thriving out how First World cinema oftentimes dramatizes the poor as on the desire for difference between First World-Third World. If either passive victims or as exemplar of pastoral purity—crude International Film Festivals were the site of viewing, they must transcendental poets or strumming guitars mouthing the rustic be understood as framing what and how film images were seen. wisdom of simple folk (1994, 259). Filipino mainstream cinema, In as much as international film festivals subtly perpetuated an in the same way, romanticized poverty by concentrating on the idea that everyone was equal by promoting Third World Cinema, stories of poor women trapped in prostitution, as they deal with viewing became limited to spectatorship and degenerated to some the dismal economic condition of the country. Most of these films form of voyeurism. It is important to underscore that film festivals 160 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 161 were not totally autonomous, but rather the very site by which international film festivals that displayed poverty in a problematic class, race, and gender interests competed and difference, instead way. Serbis was directed by Brillante Mendoza, a former produc- of leading toward political mobility and emancipation, became tion designer of Lino Brocka in television and commercials, who another salient feature of racism, colonialism, or sexism. also dabbled in production design for full-length feature films. The Difference reinforces hierarchy and between First and Third latter was directed by Jim Libiran, a former television investigative world countries; films from the Third World became theatrical journalist. In terms of portrayal of working-class characters, Serbis display, compelling representation of poverty. Visuality in this case was not entirely different from Brocka’s films—even the resolution was more about the reconstitution of First World audience against of Alan to leave the family’s movie house and go elsewhere reso- Third Word as objects to be viewed. In other words, in as much nated with some of the characters’ actions in Brocka’s movies. as film festivals purported to be a celebration of talent and the In depicting poverty and use of locale without the benefit of arts, viewing betrayed its principle, giving way to objectification elaborate production set up, Serbis was also definitely following or pornography on one hand and voyeurism on the other. Shohat Brocka’s realism, as this film is a day-in-the-life portrait of a family and Stam discusss Mrinal Sens’s Aakaler Sandhane (In Search of running a movie house that showed pornographic films and Famine, 1980) which was about a film crew who went to a remote allowed sexual encounters between moviegoers. The film used village to shoot a film entitled Aakaler Sandhane, a fictive study of a moving video camera to follow characters such as Nanay Flor, the real Bengal famine of 1943. Accordingly, the film highlights the the family matriarch who had a bigamy case against her husband, social abyss separating the urban middle-class filmmakers from then Alan who learned his girlfriend was pregnant, and then Nayda the impoverished rural world they attempted to portray (1994, who was married but attracted to her cousin, Ronald. One gets 280). Similar contradictions of filming poverty and misery exist in the impression that the movie is a documentary of these charac- geopolitics, where the display of the Third World reinforced this ters, such that as the day developed, the family struggles to focus kind of dualism, alterity, and otherness. on the daily tasks associated with the movie house, with their Hardt and Negri trace this internalization of the outsider to own personal conflicts overwhelming them. The moving camera the logic of capital accumulation since capitalism thrives only in technique employed in this film provides a seamless depiction of uneven development or in selective exploitation to create surplus various characters and scenes where the only logical connection (2000, 16). The recent success of independent films in the country is is the movie house itself, where everything happens. With close a good case of studying this problematic visuality and with today’s up shots of skin wounds, filthy restrooms, and sexual encounters proliferation of independent films that display poverty in Manila or of various characters, the film achieved an ultimate effect of elic- in other cities in the Philippines, this otherness is being internal- iting the viewers’ loathing. Such film technique could be under- ized and capitalized; it becomes the visual spectacle for eliciting stood as carnivalesque in so far as a carnival is a production of the pity and disavowal. Manila visibility in this case is not the kind grotesque and the excessive. of political visibility that Brocka employed when his films were The film capitalized on various forms of excesses, such as the first exhibited abroad. In the internalization of the other, visibility five-minute scene of Alan who was cleaning the wound on his butt becomes selective to an audience and independent films tended to or as he was cleaning filthy toilets; or with Ronald getting a blowjob play around some form of vulgar capitalistic opportunism. Some from a gay patron and moviegoer; or with Nayda cleaning her of the independent films today in the Philippines are guilty of rooms. Furthermore, a carnival show does not necessarily consti- displaying poverty in Manila. tute a coherent whole but rather a serialization of one show after Serbis (Service, 2008) and Tribu (Tribe, 2007) are two of the another, one display of oddity after another. In this way, Serbis’ use most successful independent films today that were showcased in of a moving video camera to capture the lives of these characters 162 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 163 can be considered a form of this serialization, one which operates conservative variation of carnivalesque display of poverty. without necessarily tying the scenes together but rather exposing Tribu, like Serbis, employs the same technique of carnivalesque and displaying a form of foible and intensifying it. In as much through creative manipulation of shots of rival gangs in Tondo, in as carnivalesque can be a potent tool for shocking the audience, the western part of Manila. The film may have some affinities and carnivals can only do so much in transcending shock to lead to a resonances with City of God (2002) in terms of themes and subject powerful realization. matter since it is about life in the slums, as well as told from the Sometimes in a carnival, the only value is the intensity of shock viewpoint of a young boy who was a witness to the deadly lives itself, but once the audience has been accustomed to an oddity, of teenage gang members, including the events that lead to their the audience leaves and searches for another without necessarily explosive confrontation. Tribu, moreover, is a slice of life in Tondo, understanding the organic unity of the show. In addition, in a which is quite notorious for its gang members. With the gang carnival show, the gaze is conditioned to look for intensity and members as the major characters in this film, they are depicted the object of view is inured to exaggeration. It is not that Brocka’s in their normal day, starting with the usual breakfast scene with films were without exaggeration, but exaggeration in Brocka’s their families, their hanging out in the streets, drinking, singing films tended to be a logical conclusion or culmination. InSerbis rap songs, attending the wake of a fallen gang mate, and then the however, the final scene is where all the disparate and discrepant confrontation of the rival gangs. scenes become connected. The ending serves as a convenient Again, what one sees is not a coherent whole but a serialization moralization, making the whole movie as a sermon. The point of of the quotidian and an intensification of oddity, as gang members the movie was that someone should be responsible, and this was themselves are considered unusual already and their way of life driven home toward the end. Serbis must be viewed as simplistic, even more peculiar, so much so that they can sing, wax poetry, and in conclusion, if its only point was to teach its viewers. And in rap; furthermore, they have a sense of brotherhood or a code, and showcasing this film to international audiences, the sermon they induct members into their group, among others. Gang life, as became moot, and so the whole movie became a meta-commen- depicted in this film, is limited to a stereotypical introduction to tary on the failure of reflexivity, lack of agency, helplessness, and violence or a violent culture of gun-toting, and then fraternizing. victimization of Filipinos. In international film festivals, movies What the film cannot show is how one gang member differs exactly like Serbis display differences as oddities, exoticizing, and even from the rest. Carnivalesque technique, to reiterate, is limited to eroticizing poverty. stereotypical depiction and one gets the impression that all gang Carnivals and carnivalesque artistic practices therefore are members think, feel, and behave alike. As the day develops and not automatically progressive since these portrayals and practices each does his own business, the ending becomes shocking because depend on who is carnivalizing whom, in what historical situa- the little kid unknowingly plays with a real gun, brings it into his tion, for what purposes, and in what manner. In some instances, mom’s room, and fires it. carnivalesque can be a form of licensed and contained rebellion The ending serves as a convenient moralization again, which, like that serves the interests of the official culture, which it appar- Serbis, betrays the whole experience of seeing, since the ending encap- ently opposes (Stallybrass and White 1986, 13). One can see how sulates the movie. This is where film fails again to elicit or provoke films like Serbis become politically conservative, such that instead thinking on the part of audience. The film highlights the stereotyp- of challenging or provoking viewers to question reality, viewers ical life of gang members only to serve as an example of what not tend to act like a commodity itself, satiating themselves through to do, a sort of simplistic prescription. Libiran, the film’s director, perpetual production and reproduction of odd images. Serbis, talked about this movie and his intention of using the film to teach compared to other films of Brillante Mendoza, is one ultimately his viewers. He believes that the film is a mirror for them and that 164 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 165 viewing is a cathartic experience. At one level, there is of course no Manila and in effect, he was also articulating the voice of the other. problem with this function that the director purports. It is, however, But independent films today that copy him or his techniques end the representation of poverty and life of youth gang members in up internalizing this otherness and as a result, have become bereft Manila for an international audience that becomes problematic. of political advocacy, playing only in ostensible ambiguity. These With such a moralistic purpose and the seemingly incoherent independent films fail, ironically, to become independent, and collection of images and scenes of the quotidian in Tondo, the film their reliance on international film festivals for affirmation only enhances a sense of the peculiarity and difference of Third World aggravated problematic neocolonial relations and uneven distri- culture and poverty. Such renditions or displays of the odd do not bution of power. With Serbis and Tribu, the visibility of Manila and necessarily translate to a critical engagement, but rather enhance other cities have again become pornographic. the perpetuation of difference, through the internalization and Pornography, therefore, is much more than just the explicit intensification of the other, the victim, and in the film’s case, the depiction of sexual practices. Ultimately, pornography objectifies “othering” of the gang members. And if one views Tribu along- its subjects, turns events or persons into something that can be side Brocka’s films and other notable films about poverty such as possessed, and maims the viewers’ critical faculty (Dworkin 1981, Fernando Meirelles’ City of God (2002), Vittorio de Sica’s Shoeshine 200–202). Such functions of pornography extend to all forms of (1946) and Bicycle Thief (1948), Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali media and textual production with their numbing effects on the (1955), Robert Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1948) and Asghar perceived and preferred audience. Sontag has reflected simi- Farhadi’s A Separation (2011), Tribu can be seen as adding less to larly on the power of photography and believes that in so far the craft and history of filmmaking, and more to the problematic as photography has the power to shock and effect an attitude representation and culture of voyeurism and spectatorship. toward its viewers, it can also serve as a containment for atti- These indie films, which exacerbate the problematic visibility of tude, causing viewers to become passive onlookers, bystanders, Manila and its poverty, contribute to political indifference, as well or spectators. as to what Baudrillard has called the “New Victim Order” (1996, Sometime in 2000, Sontag narrated, an exhibit of Black 131). Accordingly, as long as there is the fetishism of otherness, victims who had been subjected to lynching small towns in the strangeness, and dual relation, the same profound disaffection United States between the 1890s and the 1930s. The photographs is at work in the so-called collective pity that is elicited by these provided a shattering, revelatory experience for the thousands films. Baudrillard points out that the humanitarian seeks the other who flocked in the New York Gallery. But then, the same pictures just as desperately in the form of victims to aid. Idealization pays were turned into souvenirs and made into postcards. More than a for better or for worse. The scapegoat is no longer the person one few of these showed grinning spectators, likely good churchgoing hounds but the one whose lot he laments. Poverty and squalor as citizens as most of them had to be, posing for the camera with depicted in these films can be fetishized. a naked, charred, mutilated body hanging from a tree as a back- The themes explored in these films have also been explored drop (Sontag 2003, 1–7). Whatever shock power photography has, and used elsewhere, and with such proliferation of study, there is in that moment, was converted into its objectifying function and always the danger of cooptation. The same danger is accompanied thus, readers or viewers became convenient voyeurs, part of that by the tendency to veer into perpetual visual ossification, which objectifying gaze that the very pictures of suffering have created or does not help the audience to be critical, but rather contributes disavowed. In other words, photography, like film, can lend itself to to their apathy. It is noteworthy to repeat that Brocka’s films pornography by a culture of passivity of onlookers and audience. remained progressive by their political context. He was trying The containment of audience and readers is of course part of a to offer a counter-discourse of the state’s propagandist image of much larger discourse. Feminist critic Laura Mulvey (1989, 14–19) 166 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 167 situated audience passivity in the psycho-sexual political discourse, the depiction of poverty in the city, in most films, stem from the where, accordingly, film production oftentimes constructs the male complex power relations already operating in the city and in its gaze and women as the objects of this gaze and fantasy. Implicit visual consumption and distribution, a network of relations that in film production is the construction of this intrusive male gaze can be oppressive, legitimate and normative, but at other times, that violates women and therefore, such films can be considered as appropriative and resistant. downright pornographic. Similarly, Said’s concept of orientalism— the knowledge produced about “the orient”—can also be consid- Seeing Metro Manila in a Novel ered as pornographic because the colony is often represented as For Mikhail Bakhtin, the modern novel as a literary form is the objectified female with their colonizers as the male counter- best suited for the multiplicity of voices, various speech acts, liter- part, wherein their relations become oppressive (1977, 31–49). ary-verbal performances that require speakers, readers or authors Orientalism is also pornographic in so far as knowledges produced to take a position, even if only by choosing the dialect in which they about the orient are stereotypes highlighting their supposed infe- speak (1991, 80–85). With the contradictory character of Manila, riority vis-à-vis the colonizers. Hence, to talk about pornography novels become strategic for exposing this duplicity or ambiguity, in this manner is not to talk about morality, but rather to fore- as well as for rendering the complexity of its depiction in so far ground film’s discursive and visual functions, whereby pornog- as the intended readers assume a particular point of view as well. raphy is more about the power relations constituted between the To depict their worlds, novels rely on the power of language or viewers and the ones being viewed, where such relations become verbal performances as opposed to visual arts and films that rely ultimately oppressive. on the power of images. With the various positions and viewpoints Seeing Manila becomes a struggle between the objectifying by which language deploys its power, I intend to demonstrate this gaze of the state and the creative manipulation or appropriation of dexterity using Edgardo M. Reyes’s novel Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag its viewers and audience. On one hand, in as much as its visibility (In the Claws of Light, 1970), starting with the archetypal romantic is constituted and distributed by the state, its consumption some- plot of man’s search for his loved one, who is aptly named as Ligaya times becomes tactical and counter-discursive. However, in films Paraiso (which is translatable to ”Bliss Paradise,” literally), and the like Serbis and Tribu, we see that viewing Manila can as well be a futility of this search as the main character degenerates from a certain conservative display of Manila, especially if the audience is romantic lover to an oppressed, casual construction worker and being led to an emotional lockdown, as well as when the audience finally, to a criminal. is not left enough room for thinking and reflection. The elusiveness of the woman he pines for is part of the tradi- Sometimes films that offer discourse and images replete tional themes of revolutionary stage plays during the American with proletarian struggles and their exploitation succeed only in occupation of the Philippines, and in these stage plays, the isolating our agony, leading to a sense of internal loathing on the Philippines has always been allegorically depicted as a woman audience’s part and that estranging distancing from the viewers who has often been wronged and abused. It is important then to abroad. What is supposed to be liberating becomes mystifying. posit that this unending search for one’s love in the novel is the Poverty is reduced to graphic depiction of filth, excessive images of visual rendition or act of imagining Manila. I will elaborate on how sexual encounters, stereotypical gay sexual encounters, rival gang such a depiction of Manila (or the country) as a suffering woman wars, and teenage anxieties. Poverty plays upon our alienation, is related to Neferti Xina Tadiar’s concept of Noranian Imaginary manufacturing the internal contradiction by projecting a perverse (“Noranian” comes from Nora Aunor, one of the seasoned Filipina desire motivated by revulsion. However, not all films about poverty actors in the Philippine cinema, well-known for her dramatic roles are counter-productive. What must be stressed here was that as the suffering woman, a domestic helper, poor little girl, and 168 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 169 other similar subservient roles). With such depiction of Manila The development of Tagalog literature would therefore be pivotal or the country as a suffering woman, I would like to look at how in contributing to the national consciousness. Tagalog writers took multifarious such depiction is and in what stages of our history their chance with Liwayway magazine, which had been serializing such depiction becomes potent. I also look into the situations Tagalog novels, short stories, poetry, comics, essays, news features, wherein such visibility becomes weak, albeit problematic. as well as entertainment news and articles since 1922. As the oldest To see Manila in the novel is to read Manila as an intersec- Filipino magazine, it produced the Tagalog works of great Filipino tion of various texts, a nexus of distinctive and coexisting stories writers like Jose Corazon de Jesus, Florentino Collantes, Julian Cruz in which Manila (or the country) becomes embodied or anthro- Balmaceda, and Cecilio and Apostol Borromeo. Edgardo Reyes, in pomorphized. Novels oftentimes rely on this intertextuality and fact, debuted his work in Liwayway. symbolic imaginary to connect not only readers to the text, but Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, from the title itself (which can be to its possible and future readers as well. Novels become a visual- translated as the phrase, “in the claws of light,” is already gesturing ization of a community of readers, thus providing a strategic and toward a kind of Manila’s visibility, not in full and glorious light, but useful framework for imagining not only oneself, but one’s place a partial light that reveals and conceals at the same time. Partial within its specific history. Despite its fictionality and imagined light creates shadows and in as much as Manila is seen or depicted worlds and places, novels help readers deal with their realities, in the novel, there is a suggestion that this light is deceptive, that as the unfamiliar world can be read as symbolic and allegorical, Manila is not what it seems to be, and that there is a darker aspect and as plots and resolutions can be graphic commentaries about to it, or that what we see of Manila is just the superficial layer. their own familiar worlds. Moreover, in as much as the reader can Construed in this way, the title suggests a sense of lure that comes visualize the country as it appears in the novel, the multifarious with partial light, but at the same time, it also immediately warns perspectives in the novel provide channels for communicating this the readers that what one sees are fractional and thus, the title depiction to other readers. becomes a form of invitation to look deeper and investigate. In Using Edgardo Reyes’s novel to see Manila provides a unique addition to this partial light, the claws are a figurative description perspective since the novel was first serialized in Liwayway maga- of Manila’s visibility. Claws or talons are used by birds of prey, and zine from 1966 to 1967, a time when Manila was also experiencing by using it to describe the kind of light that falls on Manila, Manila rapid urban growth in the context of Marcos’s dictatorship and the then can be seen as a prey, caught up in this ambiguity of revela- structural adjustment programs launched by institutions like the tion and concealment. However, Manila is possibly trapped as well, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. With its serializa- unable to move, waiting to be devoured. tion in a magazine, Reyes was able to provide enough incidents, Manila as caught in a predatory relationship alerts us to its thereby bringing the end of the installment to enough of a conclu- intertextuality; it indicates that its depiction as a prey comes from sion to satisfy his readers; at the same time, this allowed him to a tradition of portraying Manila and by extension, the country, as keep enough elements unresolved to entice the same readers into a hapless victim from Jose Rizal’s novels to seditious plays during coming back for more. The serialization of the novel, as a result, the American colonization of the Philippines, as well as popular provided the very space and medium for making sense of Manila. It melodramas in the seventies. Seditious plays like Hindi Aco Patay is important to emphasize that the novel is written in Tagalog, the (I’m Not Dead, 1903), Tanikalang Guinto (Golden Chains, 1902), and language mainly used in Manila. By using Tagalog, there is already Kahapon, Ngayon, at Bukas (Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, 1903) the implicit gesture to address the Tagalog readers at a time when are all deceptively love stories between a revolutionary soldier and English, as a language, was dominant in many school curricula and a beautiful Filipina maiden. However, because of the colonial situa- the US exercised hegemony over the country’s cultural production. tion, these seditious plays became allegorical and in most of these 170 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 171 plays, the beautiful maiden, wronged and victimized, would always houses’ stilts stood in murky waters as dark as burnt honey and viscous as reveal herself in the end as the embodiment of nation, since she melted tin.] (Translation is mine.) would always be dressed in the colors of the Philippine flag. These were called seditious plays precisely because the Americans had Depicting the place like a snake serves as a ready clue to a outlawed the exhibition of Philippine flags and theater writers and jungle-like existence and life in the city. Manila as a jungle can directors were cunning enough to use stage plays by which they only mean that life within it is a predatory, dog-eat-dog, survival could wave the Philippine flag through costumes and express their of the fittest sort of existence. Using this in the novel connotes the nationalism. Walang Sugat (I Have no Wounds, 1898), for instance, danger that abounds in a concrete jungle; it implies that everyone was first presented to the public in 1902 at the Teatro Libertad is on his own or that no one can be trusted. This depiction situ- (Liberty Theater). The play is set during the Philippine Revolution ates Julio and Ligaya, as well as their love story, the latter of which (1896–1898) against Spain, at the height of the injustices received by is definitely fraught with all these betrayals, broken dreams and Filipinos from the colonial rulers. The play also features the romance hopes, suffering, and misery. One street in the novel is named aptly and love affair between Tenyong and Julia, in which toward the end of Misericordia, which is a real street in Manila, and the name that revolution, Tenyong is reunited with Julia and both sing about their has its roots in misery cannot be more appropriate to the theme freedom. More importantly, their costumes as revolutionaries and of the work. It is also important that much of this betrayal comes the mother country cannot be mistaken for other than as symbolic from the lure of the city, as both Julio and Ligaya are drawn to expression of one’s patriotism, which stir powerful emotions against Manila to find work and improve their lives. the colonizers, who are in turn always seen as predators. The depiction of Manila as a snake here also becomes a fitting Depicting Manila as a dangerous place can be culled from the trope for the kind of lure that Adam and Eve experienced when novel’s apt description of a place in Manila, called Estero Sunog they were seduced by the snake in paradise. It is not inadvertent Apog—an estuary where a factory of lime is located. Here one reads then, as the novel is read as Julio’s search for his lover Ligaya a description of a squatters’ area in that estuary: Paraiso; as such, the story becomes a graphic rereading of the seduction of the first man and woman in paradise. In the arche- Ang Estero Sunog-Apog ay isang itim na ahas na nakapalupot sa Isla de Balut, typal story, both lose the paradise, their innocence, and then are isang piraso ng lupang umulpot sa baybay-dagat sa kasasahod ng basurang banished to roam the earth. In using the concrete jungle to depict suka ng salaulang lungsod. Sa bahagi ng North Bay Boulevard na pinigtas ng Manila, the novel brings to fore these problems of alienation and Estero Sunog-Apog ay nakabagtas ang isang konkretong tulay. Sa kabilang exile, hopelessness, suffering, and death. For reader, such a depic- labi ng estero, sa kapaligiran ng konkretong tulay, ay nagsampid ang mga tion of Manila becomes powerful and strategic in foreshadowing barong-barong, dikit-dikit, at kapit-kapit upang mandi’y magkaalalayan sa the fate of characters. kanilang kahinaan. Ang mga haligi nila ay mga payat na binting nakasisid sa Aside from depicting the estuary as the proverbial snake, it is burak. Sa silong nila ay di tumitinag ang likidong sing-itim ng sunog na pulot also described as full of dirt and refuse from the city. Such graphic at sinlapot ng lusaw na tingga. (Reyes 1986, 22–23) visualization of filth that makes the place unfit for living becomes a sort of commentary on the kind of denigration of people and unfair [The estuary is a black snake coiling around the Isle of Cover, an inlet that treatment of workers. In the following paragraph, this squatter’s was formed by the tides and pile of rubbish of a filthy city. In the North Bay community thrives only because of the factory nearby: Boulevard where the estuary ends, there is a bridge made of concrete. On the other side of the estuary, near the bridge, makeshift houses are spread Sa silangan, isang pukol mula sa konkretong tulay, ang estero ay nagsasanga, together as though they support each other in their utmost weakness. The lumilikha ng higanteng Y. Sa lukab ng higanteng Y ay nakalatag ang isang 172 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 173

kagulat-gulat na imperyo ng komersyo at industriya. Dito lumuluwal ng the nation) as a suffering woman. Literary critic Soledad Reyes mantika at mga sabon at mga mantikilyang matatagpuan mulang Jolo notes that the image of the suffering woman is a staple in popular hanggang Aparri, mga produktong maririnig sa bawat bukas mo ng radyo, culture. According to her, the period of production of popular makikita sa bawat bukas mo ng telebisyon, masasagasaan sa bawat bukas literature, from the serialized novels to seditious plays and komiks, mo ng magasin. (Reyes 1986, 22–23) is the period of the Romance Mode, since most of these stories are love stories where the hero is always portrayed as a lover and [To the east, a stone’s throw away from the bridge, the estuary forks. In the the fair maiden will always be the representation of the mother delta, an empire of commerce and industry stands. This is the factory of country (1991, 26). cooking oil, soaps and butter that can be found from Jolo to Aparri, prod- Reyes believes, furthermore, that this romance mode had ucts that one hears over the radio, one sees on television and one reads on already been present in corrido and awit, the Philippine versions magazines.] (Translation is mine.) of the European Medieval romances. These romantic narratives help readers and listeners make sense of their lives, make The factory is described as an empire whose products are every- complex reality intelligible through stylized depiction or various where from the northern province of Jolo to Aparri down south, literary conventions, and provide sanction for ceremonies, explain and then as heard on radio, seen on TV, and read about on maga- origins and settlements, etc. (23). Romance mode always conjures zines. The depiction intimates the kind of problem that the char- a fantastical world, a world where there is suffering and separa- acters are dealing with: the basic problem in economy, the uneven tion of lovers but also always ends in their reunion. Such depiction production, distribution, and consumption of food. Even though becomes a strategic reading, as readers become familiar with these there is no scarcity in production, the workers who toil in these texts as allegorical, since they see romance as their refracted reality factories cannot afford these goods and are trapped within inhu- and love stories as the very condition of subjection and suffering. mane and desperate living conditions. The description of the nearby The romance mode paved the way to more realistic novels, such factory in a squatters’ community is an attempt of the author to that by the seventies, when most romantic novels were serialized situate relationships and sociality within the governing forces of in magazines like Liwayway, the reading public knew only too economy, making the story more realistic and thus less romantic. well that all these stories were versions of their unending struggle This prepares the readers for eventual tragedies and makes sense against oppression. Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, therefore, as one of as well of the experience of urbanization which had been part of the most popular realistic novels influenced by this tradition of the seventies. Any reader back in that decade would have automat- romance mode, has always been understood and appreciated as ically seen such a passage in the novel as a bold attempt to criticize the imaginary desire of every Filipino in their struggle or contin- the existing condition of Manila, such that in so far as Manila was uing fight against various forms of oppression from colonization being promoted or hailed as the “City of Man,” or the “New Society,” then to the alienation of city life now. In Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, people knew even then that such monikers were simply lip service. Julio becomes the typical Filipino while Ligaya Paraiso becomes Insofar as Manila is depicted as a snake, or a jungle, even an the embodiment of ideal. inverted paradise, the novel also uses Ligaya Paraiso not only as The romance mode depicts the nation as a suffering woman, a character but as an allegorical embodiment of Manila and the usually as deranged, hysterical, crying, or wounded. Sa mga Kuko country. Her name means happiness and it is not surprising that ng Liwanag then becomes another portrait of this suffering woman Julio’s search for Ligaya can be read as everyman’s search for happi- as Ligaya Paraiso here is recruited from the province to Manila ness. Only in this novel, this search becomes tragic and this kind to work, only to end up as a prostitute who is then killed by the of reading alerts us to another tradition of depicting Manila (or owner of the whorehouse. The image of a suffering woman used 174 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 175 in this novel, together with other romance mode of literature that films today are replete with characters of the suffering woman, and portrays the suffering woman, only affirms the collective history one actress who excels in this genre is Nora Aunor, who has starred of abuses suffered by Filipinos. For Marxist critic Fredric Jameson, in countless movies with a suffering heroine. reading novels as part of a grand narrative constitutes a symbolic Critic Neferti Xina Tadiar uses Aunor’s name as a trope to under- act and the continuing proliferation of such novels thereby become stand not only the popularity of melodrama as a genre, but also as the incessant desire for narrativization, or in this case, the visuali- a predilection to identify unconsciously with the suffering woman. zation of our political unconscious (1983, 5). This act is considered Accordingly, during the eighties’ snap election for instance, Tadiar unconscious, additionally, because these novels and plays are seem- observes how Cory Aquino, the grieving widow of the hero Ninoy ingly discrepant and multifarious, yet when taken as a continuum, Aquino, was pitted against the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Even one can see whatever is concealed: this overwhelming desire to though Cory is a common housewife who has no formal training resolve conflicts and confront contradictions; in other words, the or education in politics, people overwhelmingly voted for her and desire to end suffering itself, to reunite with loved ones, to imagine made her president. For Tadiar, this phenomenon can be explained once again a nation. by our proclivity to identify with the suffering woman, a tendency It is also notable that the unconscious takes on a particular which she calls our Noranian Imaginary; this is the imaginary in form and works by way of both sublimation and condensation, the Lacanian sense, as the locus where the subject realizes and inte- according to Sigmund Freud. Given the limited expressions based grates his or her disjointed, fragmented states, pregenital phases, on our history of colonization and subjugation, collective desire and partial drives (Lacan 1996, 78–79). In other words, Noranian finds its outlets, transforming such desire for freedom and liber- Imaginary, in as much as it explains the popularity of melodra- ation to heroic and romantic narratives, from epics to modern matic films and TV programs about suffering women, also informs novels. But sublimation also works on the act of reading and and constitutes our identification with these cultural forms (Tadiar reception, as these narratives are not just there to saturate us, but 2004, 10–15). Both for Lacan and Tadiar, these cultural forms are rather to interrogate and transform our implicit beliefs and values, a means and mode of identification on the level of the symbolic even to transcend our ways of seeing. If our collective unconscious plane. Additionally, this is the reason that the suffering woman is assumes the form of a suffering woman, it only makes sense as deployed in novels, plays, and films, from Edgardo Reyes’s Sa mga the woman becomes both the sublimated and condensed image of Kuko ng Liwanag through Ligaya, to Philippine films that feature our suffering, objectified to the point that we can critically engage Nora Aunor, to politics as Cory Aquino, or even to our present it, resituating and visualizing ourselves by bringing us deeper into economy as exemplified by millions of overseas Filipina migrant reflexivity. When we see the suffering woman, we see ourselves. workers who suffer maltreatment and abuse from their employers. The suffering woman in the novel can only be understood as These novels provide the necessary language and through such, part of this collective unconscious, this collective identification, also provide the necessary visuality to articulate and imagine which is present from the time of colonization of Philippines until our experience of contradiction, as most of these contradictions now. Filipinos are still suffering and in the dark, just as the title of (social, economic, and political) are part of our long history of the novel also suggests a prolonged moment when the light has class struggle, gender conflict, and even racial discrimination. For not yet fallen completely on Manila. It makes sense now that this Benedict Anderson, the formation of modern nation is understood partial light alludes to the inevitability of freedom, yet somehow not in terms of its articulated political ideologies, but with large suggests that this freedom has not yet been fully grasped. The cultural systems that create, inform, and precede it (1983, 10–15). proliferation of romantic stories about suffering women can also Insofar as the novels provide an imagined community through its be understood within this trope of partial light. Television and contemporary and future readers, the novels serve as the requisite 176 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 177

a perceiver among others who are equally engaged with this vision. The act of seeing Manila is also an act of understanding contradictions and problematic relations. In the novel Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag, in that partial light, in the interplay between absence and presence, between what is revealed and concealed, seeing is thus an aesthetic, ethical project, and ultimately, it is also the site of struggle.

Toward a Sensory Study of Metro Manila By way of conclusion, I would like to tie up some loose ends in my argument on how seeing leads to an aesthetic and ethical sensory project. I started with my own account of seeing Metro Fig 4. Lino Brocka, Maynila sa Manila from a perspective of a jeepney commuter, learning about mga Kuko ng Liwanag my place and the various cities I passed by, including the apparent Source: Rizal Library contradiction of one city to another and the disparity of our lives. Photo Collection In connecting such points, I also made sense of these contradictions as part of, if not the outcome, of the greater contradictions of capital flows, labor relations, and the global politico-economic space or conduit for representation of modern society (or the conditions. Thus, even an innocent glance or the act of looking out nation), and this spatial imagination has for a long while now been from the jeepney seat instantly becomes a mediated act of criti- at work from the very beginning (Tadiar 2004, 3–4). cality, a way of seeing that simultaneously questions the object of In other words, what we read in these novels is our contin- sight, the site itself, and one’s relation to the place. This reflexive uing saga, in which seeing Manila becomes both retrospective seeing is not unlike reading stories and watching films, and what I and forward-looking at the same time, and in which a potential have tried to do in this chapter is to set up how all these forms of character such as the suffering woman can be used to visualize seeing constitute and become constitutive of each other. and radicalize earlier forms of expression. At the same time, it can Trying to recall seventies Manila, for me, was like taking snap- also anticipate possibility. Reyes’s novel, therefore, is a rereading shots or watching a movie reel unfurling before me, wherein the and revisualization of our past and present suffering. We need jeepney ride serves as the practical cinematograph. I remember to understand that reading or seeing Manila always initiates a the morning traffic, the narrow alleys from the streets of Taguig contradictory process, as well as augurs a reading between the to Pateros, Pasig, Marikina, and then Quezon City, the smell of lines where the agent of discourse becomes at the same time an cologne used by students, the factory refuse along the banks of utterance (Bhabha 1994, 24). Such a reading opens possibilities Pasig river, the women who go to the marketplace, men who go to and becomes strategic, which Jameson argues should be stra- factories, and then the kids who go to schools. Everyday life was tegic enough “to recover the original urgency for us, if told within rendered surreal in my jeepney rides, and when I took my first the unity of a single great collective story, the struggle to wrest a train ride to Manila in the late eighties, Manila’s squalor became realm of Freedom from a realm of Necessity—the unfinished plot of very palpable from the window seat of train traveling from Central class struggles” (1983, 3–4). This is exactly what seeing means and to Buendia Station. Additionally, I’m sure that I’m not the only one entails; seeing is a task, an imperative of understanding oneself as who felt, that night, that the city can be overwhelming. Eventually, 178 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila GARY C. DEVILLES 179 reading or watching Manila in novels and films made some sense various independent films that have taken as their subject matter of my whole experience. Henri Bergson, in discussing how move- the growing relentlessness of Filipinos over extra-judicial killings ment is constituted in cinema, tells us that our perception of caused by the present government’s rhetoric of total war on drugs. reality is very much conditioned by an abstract, invisible apparatus These films have been extra vigilant in exposing the contradictions of knowledge, as though a kind of cinematograph resides inside of our society: the everyday life, poverty, and corruption in our us (Deleuze 1986, 3). To a degree, cinematography presages phil- government and police force. None of these films have asserted osophical inquiry for Bergson, and although this is not within the nor endorsed the simplistic and jingoistic way of solving these scope of my work, I tend to agree with the dialectical or dialogic problems, and many have suggested, by way of “showing,” that only relationship of these modes of seeing. Just as Bergson was trying through continuous, reflexive thinking can some of our problems to make sense of Eisenstein’s editing as a mode by which the film’s be properly addressed and thought about. Indeed, self-criticism ideological power is constituted, I also see how watching Metro can and may transcend our limitations. Herbert Marcuse (1972, Manila in either Lino Brocka’s or today’s indie films could make 64) reminds us, using his reading of Karl Marx’s The Economic and sense. Also, these activities resonate from my own experience of Philosophic Manuscript of 1844, that the emancipation of our senses living in Metro Manila since the seventies. Brocka’s neorealism is is predicated on a reconstruction of society, which is in turn gener- perfectly understandable from an experience of repressive society, ative of new relationships and serves as a continuing font of a new when films and writings deemed as subversive at that time, were rationality freed from exploitation. With the present crises and the then banned by the state, virtually erased from the consciousness endless, senseless killings of the innocent and the poor, nothing of moviegoers or students like me. Hence, one cannot just set aside and nobody is freed—there is, instead, only a growing myopic fear. the value of lived experience, the sensorial, or even the affective dimension of the space we inhabit. Henri Lefebvre, in the seventies had already criticized the References dichotomy between the concrete and abstract space, including how AlSayyad, Nezar. 2006. Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern from Reel to the abstract space of urban planners and architects has taken over Real. London: Routledge. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and control of decisions about urban life; meanwhile, real activity with- Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. draws to the everyday, to static space, to the reification that was Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1991. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited by M. initially endured and then accepted by the rest (Lefebvre 2003, 182). Holquist and translated by C. Merson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Sensory projects can be construed as the first step in rectifying this Texas Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 1996. The Perfect Crime. London and New York: Verso. problem, yet it should by no means be considered as comprehen- Berner, Erhard. 1997. Defending a Place in the City: Localities and the Struggle for sive, since urban phenomenon can only be grasped and understood Urban Land in Metro Manila. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. within the varied scopes and disciplines we possess. Seeing Metro Bhabha, H. 1994. Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Manila in various texts should lead to other sensory modalities Brocka, Lino, director.1985. Bayan ko: Kapit sa Patalim [My own country]. Malaya of hearing or feeling Metro Manila, or to an extension of scope of Films, Philippines. ______. 1989. Orapronobis [Fight for Us]. Cannon Films, Philippines. sight/site, such as seeing other cities like Cebu, Jakarta, Mumbai, or Caoili, Manuel A. 1988. The Origins of Metropolitan Manila: A Political and Social Mexico. More importantly, a sensory project such as seeing should Analysis. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. always be calibrated (or recalibrated) within the present politically Dandan, Pedro S. 1996. May Buhay sa Looban at 20 Kuwento. Pinili at May Intro- vexing situation, especially in an era where the state and global duksyon ni Virgilio Almario. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1986. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image.Translated by H. Tomlin- powers threaten to erase and eradicate everything that stands in son and B. Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. their way. At this point of writing, I would like to take note of the 180 Sensing and Seeing Metro Manila

DUANE ALLYSON U. GRAVADOR-PANCHO Dworkin, Andrea. 1981. Pornography—Men Possessing Women. London: The Women’s Press. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by MB Ramos. New York: Herder and Herder. Graham, Phil. 2006. Hypercapitalism: New Media, Language, and Social Percep- tions of Value. New York: Peter Lang. Sex(edness) in the City Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. London: Harvard University Press. Harvey, David. 2006. Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Reimagining Our Urban Spaces Geographical Development. London: Verso. Hsu, Hua. 2010. “Walking in Someone Else’s City.” Criticism 52 (3–4): 509–28. With Abraham Akkerman Jameson, Fredric. 1983. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Routledge. Lacan, Jacques and Bruce Fink. 1996. Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. Translated by B. Fink, H. Fink, and R Grigg. London and New York, WW Nor- ton and Company. Libiran, Jim, writer and director. 2007. Tribu. DVD. 8 Glasses Production and Introduction Cinemalaya Foundation, Philippines. TO BUILD A CITY is to make space. But of course, we need to Lico, Gerard. 2003. Edifice Complex: Power, Myth and Marcos State Architecture. ask: for what? For whom? If city-building, as in human existence, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The Urban Revolution. Foreword by N. Smith and Translated is always directed toward some end, then it is necessary to estab- by R. Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. lish the end of architecture as profoundly related to some end of Marcuse, Herbert. 1972. Counter-Revolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press. human life, or some depiction of what a human life should be, as a Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Followed by working human being envisions it. notes. Edited by C. Lefort, translated by A. Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. According to Abraham Akkerman (2006, 229), the construction Mulvey, Laura. 1989. Visual and Other Pleasures: Theories of Representation and of the city is rooted largely in gendered traits and dispositions; Difference. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. thus, we build cities out of masculine and feminine characteristics. Rafael, Vicente. 1988. Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conver- Akkerman’s claim is that the Western City has been built largely sion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. out of masculine traits or aspirations, leaving the feminine traits to Reyes, Edgardo M. 1986. Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag. Manila: De La Salle University Press. the sidelines that serve minor decorative and profitable functions. Reyes, Soledad. 1991. The Romance Mode in Philippine Popular Literature and Oth- As this paper shows, a huge part of the feminine that city-building er Essays. Manila: De La Salle University Press. has shelved are the aspects of intimacy and eroticism. Said, Edward. 1977. Orientalism. London: Penguin. As we explore our cities more and more, we are bound to Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. 1994. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge. discover that such cities are wanting in terms of spaces for Soja, Edward. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical fostering human connectedness and desire. What we have, Social Theory. London: Verso. instead, are spaces that serve only to transform whatever desires Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White. 1986. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. we may have into something profitable. The result, thus, is the New York: Cornell University Press. kind of urban living that thinks of intimacy and eroticism as Tadiar, Neferti Xina M. 2004. Fantasy Production: Sexual Economies and other Phil- ippine Consequences for the New World Order. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univer- either the concerns of the home or as capital—either way, it is sity Press. the kind of urban living that is impoverished and incapacitated Tolentino, Rolando B. 2001. National/Transnational: Subject Formation and Media in its desiring of the other. in and on the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

181 182 Sex(edness) in the City DUANE ALLYSON U. GRAVADOR-PANCHO 183

Because the masculine has always emphasized the straight The Western City as Masculine: Abraham Akkerman and the predictable, it has also always favored the mind over the Mutual feedbacking body, leading to the building of dis-embodied cities, cities that In “Femininity and Masculinity in City-Form: Philosophical discourage movement as much as possible, cities that discourage Urbanism as a History of Consciousness,” Abraham Akkerman relationships except for purposes of advancing one’s own interests. traces out the development of the city-form based on the unfolding What this ultimately leads to, therefore, is a kind of impoverished of human consciousness. Based on Carl Sauer’s insight into mutual human living, with an emphasis on the self as alone, as well as an feedbacking (2006, 230), Akkerman shows how the process of enforced forgetting of human existence as shared. building a city is one that is accomplished by human conscious- What is needed, therefore, is a way to reimagine our urban ness; at the same time, as its construction, the same city, in turn, spaces, in such a way that they highlight our bodily capacities shapes the consciousness that built it, giving rise to new problems, to express desire for each other without leading to possession or new concerns, and new values. oppression. There is a need to reconstruct spaces, if only to have spaces that allow us to rediscover our proximity to each other, a City-building as masculine, feminine: The Myths proximity whose human quality lies in the fact that it can never Akkerman (230–32) shows, more importantly, that city-building be overcome. Such a proximity, of course, is one that is rooted is rooted in gendered traits and characteristics: the feminine and in love. the masculine, which, he says, are represented by two myths, the In this way, then, we can say that we, as human beings, take Myth of the Garden (feminine), and the Myth of the Citadel (mascu- responsibility for the city that we have built, as well as for its unin- line). The City as a Garden emerged as a response to human values tended consequences, including our own dehumanization. In this such as fertility and abundance, while the City as a Citadel arose as whole process of taking responsibility, we have also come to see a response to values such as protection and security, both internal how we are to restore what our own city has taken away from us: and external. Through time, it was the Citadel that became domi- the capacity to remake our own humanity. nant as opposed to the Garden, as communities also began to favor This paper proceeds in four parts. The first part is a discus- the need for security over the celebration of fertility. sion of Akkerman’s text on femininity and masculinity taking on Along with this, according to Akkerman, came the priority given a city-form. However, instead of simply settling with Akkerman’s to egoism over altruism (232), with the city spaces beginning to gender binary, this work also treats the masculine-feminine take the form of a fortress, and the garden gradually losing ground. divide as the mind-body divide, and shows that it is the body In this sense, then, we see how spaces were constructed to address that we lose along the way in the construction of our cities. man’s need to secure property, over and above whatever reasons The second part is the discussion of the Western city as dis-em- he might have had to establish relations with others. In a way, we bodied, and as such, it is a place that discourages us from using can say that the spaces man constructed, while protecting his our bodies for mobility and for human interactions, thus leading property, also isolated him from other people and kept him from to the kind of existence that renders us incapable of loving one sharing what he owned. At the same time, the fortress man built another. The third part is where we see the proposed solution to around himself became a testament to what he had achieved, and the problem identified in this paper: man’s loss of humanness thus a testament to his egoism. in the city may be restored by reclaiming the original meaning of eros and translating applications of eros into spatiotem- City-building as Platonic: Straight and Predictable poral constructions and urban planning. The fourth part is the Apart from the understanding of the masculine as the kind conclusion. of consciousness that seeks to define and protect what is his, 184 Sex(edness) in the City DUANE ALLYSON U. GRAVADOR-PANCHO 185 masculinity also took on a different dimension of meaning in Plato. are clear and distinct over those that are vague and confusing In Plato, masculinity became not just a matter of securing one’s (239). With Descartes, we see a shift: from Plato’s straightness as ownership, but also the kind of consciousness that accomplishes the foundational principle of city-building, we now have straight- this security of property in a very calculated, measured way. Thus, ness in city-building as the foundational principle for human another characteristic for the masculine would be that it is straight consciousness and, consequentially, human life. (235); moreover, as straight, there is a clear sense of positionality As an attempt to develop further the ideas of Akkerman, this and direction in the masculine, while the feminine would be repre- paper, applied to urban planning, goes beyond the binary of mascu- sented by the curves and the “crooked lines.” With Plato, then, line-feminine, and explores the mind-body divide, where the mind, masculinity becomes synonymous with a hierarchical system, as straight, logical, and responsible for prediction and control, classifying and measuring everything according to a standard of takes priority in the building of cities. Meanwhile the body, as straightness, where the straight line took on an ethical dimension flowing, unpredictable, and curved, is left to the sidelines. Hence, in the Platonic world. from the myths that early civilization has handed down to us, to Along with the assumption of straightness-as-ought, further- Plato’s blueprint of the Ideal City, down to Descartes’ standard for more, has come the consequence of designing cities according to the modern city, we find that the Ideal state of being of the human the same assumption. Cities designed after what Akkerman calls person is one that is driven by the thinking mind, and at the same the Platonic blueprint thereby sought to reproduce straightness in time, the Ideal City is one that enables us to think of new ideas, every possible way, minimizing curves and eliminating crooked- new strategies, and new possibilities for achievement. ness as much as possible. The operative principle in Platonic archi- Looking into Philippine history, we find that Daniel H. Burnham’s tecture was also taken as true in the ethical life–that is, human plans (Palafox 2014) for the City of Manila also ran along the same life, if it is to be moral, is to be characterized by a rigidity and a lines—emphasizing logic and straightness, calculating proper firmness (235), reminiscent perhaps of a fort, a tower, or a phallus. distances from one boulevard to another, and assigning specific spaces for waterways, parks, and civic spaces; ultimately, these City-building as Cartesian: No Confusion plans reflected Burnham’s vision for Manila, that of a city that could It is with Rene Descartes that Akkerman finally shows more rival the grandeur of the more advanced Western cities. It was to be clearly the second phase of mutual feedbacking. Descartes, known as the City Beautiful of the Orient, with Burnham infusing according to Akkerman, as a philosopher and mathematician, was some touches of Rome, Paris, and Venice into his plans for Manila. largely influenced by the New Cities of the Renaissance which he had begun to see emerge (238). Built primarily on Platonic foun- Akkerman: Mind the Gap dations, these New Cities were characterized by straightness, However, as Akkerman pointedly reminds us, in between the where one sees roads stretching into roads, and the distance of planning of the city and the actual city, there is a gap (2006, 240). each one is perfectly measured in such a way as to lead a person to This gap has two aspects. The first aspect is what Akkerman calls the next—everything comes and goes, therefore, without surprise; the “unplanned,” as captured by situations that serve to remind everything is predictable. that we are not in control: for example, when one’s car breaks down Descartes, being a child of his time, thus fashions his mathe- in the middle of the road, or when the weather does not seem to matical and philosophical system out of the cities to which the “cooperate” with our plans to go out, and many other instances. so-called Enlightenment has given birth. Akkerman argues that This aspect of the gap gives the human being a quick but biting it is largely to the straight and predictable New Towns of the reminder of the city as a human artifact, and as a human artifact, Renaissance that Descartes owes his system, valorizing ideas that it comes with human limits and definitions. One only needs to look 186 Sex(edness) in the City DUANE ALLYSON U. GRAVADOR-PANCHO 187 around Manila’s state today to see how builders have fallen short Cities Without Bodies of realizing Burnham’s original plans. The second aspect of the gap In the article “Imperiled Pedestrian,” Charles Porter (1964, 55–67) is the ethical aspect, where the way we have fashioned our cities depicts how difficult it is to have lived as a pedestrian in Paris of have also caused a significant change in our character, and thus the eighteenth century. We read of a pedestrian who considers in who we are as human beings. In a way, we have become our himself as imperiled, due to the many dangers that walking along cities—mechanical, calculative/calculable, in all of our dealings, the city streets has in store for him—from the “minor” dangers and even with each other. such as getting doused with the water that someone throws out With the second aspect of the gap, then, we see a new dimension the window, down to the more serious dangers such as getting run opening up. We now see how the process of building cities is simul- over by a speeding carriage. Centuries later, we find that pedes- taneous with the building of what is to be considered a fully human trians still suffer the same fate: that of facing dangers that come life. With cities built to emphasize and maximize achievement and with physical mobility. profit, it is understandable that the principles of straightness and What is the assurance that the city gives, in its pretense of predictability should accompany them. As a consequence, we have control and predictability? The city promises safety and secu- also come to believe that such is the so-called measure of a human rity, and thus devises various solutions, all of which are aimed at life—an existence that is straight and predictable, a life lived by the flourishing of this promise. Hence, what are these solutions? carefully foreseeing benefits and costs both in the long term and They all boil down to this: that people remain as immobile as in the short, a life emphasizing achievement and profit. And all possible. On a micro scale, surveillance and other technological this at the expense of those parts of our selves that are “crooked,” systems restrict movement, or willingly perform the movement for surprising, altruistic. people. Netflix marathons have replaced the cinema, for instance. Communication lines, business transactions, and even athleticism The Western City and Its Dis-embodiment have all taken on a virtual character; maintaining this virtual trait, Developing Akkerman’s concept of the gap, this present section they have also moved on to become the quick and easy solutions to shows how the gap that was earlier discussed can also be explained the threat and agony of actual mobility. Websites and applications by way of looking into our cities and revealing not what they have, thus give the assurance of productivity and efficiency, right from but what they lack. At the same time, what the cities lack may also the comfort and security of one’s home. tell us a lot about what we have come to lack as human beings who On a grander, macro scale, there are also cities that have built dwell in the city. to make people believe that each city is fully capable of providing Returning to Sauer’s insight into mutual feedbacking, where everything they need, to make them believe that there really is no consciousness shapes cities and cities shape consciousness, it is need to move elsewhere, or indeed, to move at all. This calls to mind perhaps time to allow our minds to be formed by the cities that the slogan of the biggest chain of shopping malls in the Philippines, we have built, focusing this time on what these cities do not have. Shoemart (SM): “We’ve got it all for you!” where the assurance in In particular, what they lack, as this section shows, is an authentic itself professes to give one enough reason to not go anywhere else, embodiment, where we have cities that discourage movement, precisely because this very mall already has everything one can cities that favor security, discourage love and pleasure, favor the possibly need. It also reminds us of certain cultural standards of profit of stability and the stability of profit, discourage personal what having a good residential area means: you must be near the relationships, and favor functional operations as well as fierce hospital, the school, the church, and the market. Once again, it competition. is the same operative principle—the less movement, the safer, the better. 188 Sex(edness) in the City DUANE ALLYSON U. GRAVADOR-PANCHO 189

What we have, then, are cities that are in themselves disem- other words, they must destroy anything that comes in the way of bodied (Pallasmaa 2008, 30 and 7),1 leading to the “creation” of the new structure that needs to be built. That in itself is disturbing human beings who also end up just as dislodged from their bodies enough. as their cities, unable to move unless with a machine. However, taken in a more fundamental sense, it becomes even more disturbing. To say that destruction is necessary for creation is Cities without Love the ultimate justification for our dehumanization, in the wake of the At this point, we return to Akkerman’s discussion of how the Ideal City. For the builder to build a city, it becomes a prerequisite early cities were built with the intent of defining and securing man’s for him to destroy himself, including whatever it is in him that gets property, protecting it against strangers who are automatically in the way of building—his capacity to be—with others in a context potential enemies or threats. From the perspective of economics, beyond productivity, and thus also his capacity to feel and love. cities were built according to the law of supply and demand. With And so, Akkerman quotes George Simmel: this, we see how the city is, in a way, a testament to how well man has preserved his selfishness and warded off his rivals. The more the unifying bond of social life takes the character of an asso- Hence, we have a Western City that is built on the notion of ciation for specific purposes, the more soulless it becomes. The complete conquest and egoism, and in pursuit of both, this city has also heartlessness of money is reflected in our social culture, which is itself come to lose its capacity to love. The city is a place that seems determined by money. . . It may be emphasized in this context that money to have forgotten how to desire without possessing. Urban spaces, has just as close a relationship to the widening of the social group as to therefore, have also become spaces where even relationships the objectification of the contents of life. (1903, quoted in Akkerman, 234) become simply reduced to matters of conquest and egoism, leaving no room for real desire and connection with another human being. At this point, it appears appropriate to ask: if we have failed to We are left with spaces that either constrict our capacities for inti- build human cityscapes as our cityscapes have failed to humanize macy to the confines of the home and the private sphere, or spaces us, what is to be done, then? that turn our desire for each other into a profit center, spaces that alienate us from our own desires. Reimagining Urban Spaces: Resuscitating Eros What have we lost? Our vain attempts at building cities based Cities without Relationships on masculine ideals have caused us to lose a significant aspect of Ultimately then, the city as we know it has alienated us, not just our humanness, what Akkerman calls the feminine. In our struggle from our bodies and our desires, but more fundamentally, from to build a city fashioned after the Ideal Man—free, independent, each other. Man’s construction of the city out of largely masculine calculative, straight—we have done so at the expense of our capac- ideals of profit, control, and predictability, has led to a reconstruc- ities for relationships, surprise, dynamism, and love. tion of human relationships under competitive and calculable In the article “Reclaiming Eroticism in the Academy” (Bell terms. and Sinclair 2014, 269), there is a concept called “resuscitating Such a depiction of the building of the city reminds us of David eros,” which we interpret to mean as the need to rescue eros on Harvey’s discussion of what urban planners call “creative destruc- two levels: first, to restore it to the meaning that is closer to its tion” (2012, 16). The assumption is that in order to build or create, etymology, and second, to restore its status in human practices it is necessary to destroy. Thus, in the building and creation of and relations. In the context of this present paper, this section cities, taken literally, contractors need to destroy trees, as well shows how the very process of urban planning itself is in dire need as pre-existing structures such as houses and other buildings. In to resuscitate eros. Additionally this resuscitation can be done in 190 Sex(edness) in the City DUANE ALLYSON U. GRAVADOR-PANCHO 191 two interrelated ways or aspects: first, to construct architectural Ultimately, as we share in this kind of existence, we also come to spaces that acknowledge the indispensable role of the body in the enrich one another. living of a human life, encouraging movement and mobility, and Apart from the garden, we may also look for ways to redesign second, to construct spaces that encourage and invite us to build our corporate offices. These offices are usually spaces that -empha relationships founded on love and desire, instead of the culture of size individual productivity to ensure individual advancement; competition. hence, cubicles set one apart from everyone else, floors and build- To resuscitate eros, the first thing to do is to restore its meaning. ings are designed in such a way that people never have to speak In the midst of a world that seems to enjoy turning everything into to each other, and many other “solutions” that the modern city a product from which one can profit, eros has had to suffer the provides to ensure such productivity. Constructing in the spirit of same fate. Transformed into capital (270) the erotic has become love, however, allows us to rethink the way we plan these offices. what we now know it to be—merely the sexual act and all tools and Rethinking leads to new ways that call into question this very methods that may be used to achieve its consummation. And yet, emphasis on productivity. Perhaps spaces that have more interac- upon closer inspection, eros has richer, more profound meaning. tive opportunities may provide the key to seeing how an overem- Erotic experiences can be found in practically any human expe- phasis on productivity has turned us into zombies and robots, as rience that serves to deepen our connection with another—art, well as the key to getting on the road to better humanness. music, poetry, and even looking upon the face of another person Utilizing our bodies for mobility allows us to physically come (270). What we need to do, then, is to give back to eroticism what together, to see, and more importantly, feel, that human existence it has lost. More interestingly, what we must return to eroticism is in the world is one that is shared and thus not solitary. At the same closer to eroticism itself than sex, and that is love. time, entering spaces that remind us of our need for one another In the context of urban planning and city-building, the task is in love helps us to see how humanness is found and cultivated in to reimagine spaces so as to make space for our bodiliness and human relationships and not just in individual accomplishments. eroticism, for our capacities to truly desire and love one another. This insight into a shared existence then underscores the meaning- The first aspect of this task consists in constructing spaces that lessness of the modern city’s emphasis on selfish motives and ambi- acknowledge and encourage the use of our bodies for mobility, tions. This new city, instead, ushers in the coming of new values, all for reaching out. This would perhaps mean giving more space for the while emphasizing empathy, relationships, community. walking, for sitting, for simply experiencing the city as a vulnerable human being among vulnerable human beings, without the Conclusion pretense to security that a car or any similar gadget provides. To build is to make space. As we have seen in this paper, human The second aspect of the task consists in constructing spaces civilization is a civilization that builds out of its innermost long- that emphasize the need to build relationships rather than profi- ings and dispositions. However, in our blind longing to become teering empires. To do this, we may want to take our cue from archi- the Ideal Man, we have made a city that has, in turn, led to our tectural spaces that invite us to embrace as it embraces us, those own unmaking. Thus, as we build cities that are founded more and spaces whose silences remind us of our own depths. Akkerman more on our aspirations for independence and profit, such cities (2006, 245) uses the imagery of the zen garden, where, as opposed transform human beings into mere calculating atoms, absolutely to the city, we feel and better experience ourselves as subjects. We independent from each other except for transactions, thereby pause, we are quiet, we reflect, and we are reminded that we are reducing relations to mere business opportunities. selves. At the same time, we are reminded that the others around To build is to make space. However, our attempts at building us are selves, too, and not mere objects for individual satisfaction. have only served to make space for more destruction, not 192 Sex(edness) in the City

AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ necessarily of physical structures, but of the capacities and abilities that were rightfully ours as human beings. In effect, our building has given place to cities, but has dis-placed the builders, and even more, its dwellers. To build is to make space, which means there is still work to The City and the Dynamism be done, and space to be made. As this paper has shown, to make 1 space this time might no longer call for more opportunities to rake of Invention and Exploitation in more profit, or for us to be even more separated from each other. Perhaps, this time, we may want to make space for that part of us which our modern cities have so strongly tried to suppress—that part which comes together, that part which reaches out, that part which truly builds, in order to make space. THE CITY IS A DYNAMISM AT PLAY. It is the hothouse for both innovation and the development of human civilizations, but it has Endnote also facilitated the creation of a worldwide web of unjust resource 1. Juhani Pallasmaa notes in “Eroticism of Space” how ironic and impossible extraction and exploitation. Because humanity created urban settle- it is for embodied human beings to create or build dis-embodied cities. Pal- ments, we as a species have an arena for continuous and creative lasmaa claims that it is impossible for architecture to have been created by a dis-embodied human being. On the other hand, we may say that the development. The city allows us to gather the best thinkers and dis-embodiment that we find and experience in our cities is a product, not entrepreneurs of our species in concentrated areas of cooperation of our actual dis-embodiment, but of our longing to be dis-embodied. For and competition. Scientific and technological ideas are shared and too long, culture has inscribed sinister meanings to the body, thus leading artistic possibilities are exhibited to challenge set boundaries. If to shared efforts to actually be rid of it. not for the city and its concentration of human exchange, the great discoveries of humanity, particularly Western humanity, in the areas References of medicine, technology, governance, and all aspects of art would Akkerman, Abraham. 2006. “Femininity and Masculinity in City-Form: Philo- never have flourished and gained world domination at the rate that sophical Urbanism as a History of Consciousness.” Human Studies 29 (2). they have today.2 However, it is also the instrument that makes http://www.jstor.org/stable/27642748. Accessed 12 June 2018. Bell, Emma and Amanda Sinclair. 2014. “Reclaiming Eroticism in the Acade- possible the marginalization of many of the world’s poor. In colonial my.” Organization 21 (2). doi: 10.1177/1350508413493084. Accessed 26 June times, the imposition of Western cultures and economies allowed 2018. for the exploitation of indigenous cultures that could not, for various Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolu- reasons, resist the impositions of colonialism. Through the establish- tion. New York: Verso. Palafox, Felino Jr. 2014. “Revisiting Daniel Burnham’s Plan for Manila and ment of cities, it was possible to link indigenous communities of the Bagiuo.” The Manila Times, August 6. http://www.manilatimes.net/ non-Western world to the mostly aggressive and imposing Western revisiting-daniel-burnhams-plan-manila-baguio-1/117058/. Accessed July economies (Gilbert and Gugler 1992). This function of the city 24, 2018. continues today to the extent that all civilizations have been linked Oz Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2008. “Eroticism of Space.” 30: 7. doi: https://doi. to the global commerce of the West and the cities are the nodes of org/10.4148/2378-5853.1451. Accessed 26 June 2018. 3 Porter, Charles. 1964. “Imperiled Pedestrian.” Yale French Studies, no. 32, Paris the net which gather all peoples of the world in that world order. in Literature. 193 194 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 195

The city is both an engine of invention and exploitation. This to understand the underlying enframing with which the imposed dialectic is the play that keeps the city dynamic and essential to upon struggle. Only then will the author work to show how this the development of civilization. This essay aims to reflect on this frame can help us understand the reality of the megacity that is dialectic and how it plays in a city like Metro Manila in order to Metro Manila. articulate its potential as an engine of the flourishing of civilization and not just the machineries of exploitation. The dialectical The Urban Monoculture and the Web of Reduction nature of the city has, in recent times, allowed for the marginali- One way to understand the global commerce which the city zation of majority of the world’s people, and it has also allowed serves to coordinate into a totality is to understand how it has for the great innovations and developments based on the ration- become a consolidated system of production, demand creation, ality of these dominant Western systems. As we face the dangers of and delivery. In this system, various cities have been reduced to Western development, as we face the unsustainability of its endless nodes which can ensure that demands are immediately iden- aspiration for development, we must rethink the city no longer as tified and products can be created and delivered immediately. a facilitator of the spread of Western civilization and development, Institutions in the city ensure that needs are identified and even but as a nursery for the emergence of a just and sustainable world maintained and that products are immediately sourced and order. However, in order to realize the other possibilities of the city, supplied so that wealth can be produced. In order to realize this, we must understand its dynamics. a system of cities that provide one aspect or the other of this It is easy for a city to become the engine for the imposition of commerce exists. This system of cities ensures that capital flows a monolithic world order. As a center that dominates the polit- freely, that labor is organized, that the non-urban areas provide ical and economic landscape, as the machinery that gathers the raw material and even labor, and that agricultural systems are economic resources and capacities of its environs, the city becomes aligned to the network (Dear and Flusty 1998, 61). Thus, it is true the center of governance, the hub of economic activity, and the that the city has the tendency to flatten. Certainly, it is capable cultural center. In order to sustain itself, it transforms all the of generating variety and excitement, with its myriad products for communities that are connected to it geographically, economically, consumption and its ever-changing entertainments. However, its and/or politically into subsidiary communities that exist mainly for variety must conform to the demands of the global market. It is the city and its economic needs. The city is then a machinery for the same ethos of global styles and values that shapes what we hegemony creation and facilitates the reduction of other commu- like to wear, how we like to live, what is our staple and what is the nities into the totality of the world economic and political order. exotic, including what we use as markers for a good life. This can Today more than ever, rural populations have been “drawn into the be seen as the “imposition of global imperatives on local econo- urban nexus” (Gilbert and Gugler 1992, 62). Hardly any community mies and culture” (61). This imposition could be characterized as exists separately from the influence of the city and its commerce the emergence of “monocultures of exportable strawberry or broc- which is necessarily connected to the web of world cities. coli in lieu of diverse staple crops grown for local consumption and The primary aim of this work is to discuss the “essence” of the the appearance of high end, high rise buildings indistinguishable city in a Heideggerian sense. Its aim is to articulate a frame for in form and occupancy from (and often in direct communication understanding what is referred to here as the presencing of the with) luxury housing built atop homeless encampments elsewhere city as it shapes human dwelling today in order to be able to in the world” (62–63). The city in such a web is described by Dear understand how they have developed worldwide. Certainly, each and Flusty as “a geographically disjointed but hyperspatially inte- city is unique and must be discussed individually, However, the grated monoculture, that is, shuffled sames set amid adaptive and enframing of Westernization must be articulated in order for us persistent local variations” (63). 196 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 197

Dwellers of the modern urban world belong to a monoculture, have access to health, education, and even basic utilities—much indeed. It is a totality whose conception of a good life, develop- more, specifically, than if they were living in rural communities. ment, civilization, and good governance is necessarily similar for This concentration of opportunity is only logical since cities are those that belong to it. Certainly, not all cities are perfectly adapted the nodes that facilitate the expansion of the world economy. Thus, to this global, urban rationality, but all cities that belong to the web cities are populated by various peoples attracted to the opportu- of this rationality are in some form or another being educated and nity of being incorporated into the world economy and its domi- assimilated in its ways. Only in this way can the global commerce nant rationality. be made fluid. In such a case, the city exists to facilitate the incor- For this reason, cities can be said to be a multiverse of ration- poration of all civilizations to this global order. Unfortunately, this alities composed of people coming from various cultures. It is a engine for world civilization development could also speed the hub that attracts people from various rationalities that are not extinction of mankind. Increasingly, we see how unjust and unsus- necessarily Westernized, but are drawn by the success of the tainable systems are being promoted by this web of cities. Urban Westernized world in providing a way of life that the West has life is very demanding of food beyond subsistence, such that it determined to be good. In the city, people of various worlds come consumes and wastes much of the world’s production. By its urban to engage the dominant, Western-defined rationality that will way of living, it consumes much of the world’s energy and produces provide incomes and services that people will need to flourish in much of its greenhouse emissions. Cities are, after all, where planes the globalized world order. In their peripheral societies, the means fly from and fly to and consume the most meat. Cities also cause to acquire these needs are difficult. The opportunities for cash directly (in their expansion) or indirectly (by their resource extrac- generating activities are lessened the farther one is from the city. tion) the destruction of the world’s forests and jungles. There are This is because people who live in the peripheral worlds often do no alternative cities because cities mainly transmit and further not know how the dominant system works and are easily exploited the systems of the worldwide web of Western consumption and by those who function best in this central world—a result of the development such that it is no longer seen as a Western way of fact that the latter possess a degree of connectedness to the global commerce. This makes it difficult for humanity to imagine other economic system which the former do not have. Thus, as much as possibilities that may be more just and sustainable. cities gather the multiplicity of peoples that are attracted to them, Yet, as we stated, the city is a hub for innovation. This is particu- they also serve to shape the hegemony of the dominant economic larly true because the city attracts the largest population of peoples rationality and tend to marginalize rationalities that do not or and the most varied. People come to the city because economic cannot subscribe to the economic and political systems it seeks to opportunity is most concentrated here. As traditional communi- consolidate. Many of these marginalized people populate the city ties and economies of subsistence are transformed into modern as its source of cheap labor. However, because the city attracts this cash and consumption economies, migration to the city become plurality of rationalities, it also bears the potential for breaking the more and more necessary because the greatest opportunities to hegemony of the dominant rationality. earn cash are concentrated here. Even if the informal dwellers live in dire conditions in the city, being employed only rarely, living in A History of Reduction slums that lack access to basic services like water and electricity, The birth of cities already bears this dialectic of multiplicity and being exposed to hazardous living conditions in dangerous and hegemony. The emergence of the city is tied closely to the locations, most people who have migrated to cities say they are development of agriculture during the Neolithic period (Bairoch better off in the city (Dear and Flusty 1988, 64). Their capacity to 1988). With the discovery of new methods of farming which even- access work that pays cash is higher in the city. There, they also tually led to surplus production, more people could live in smaller 198 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 199 land areas. These more densely populated communities “became inequality” (Roberts 2009, 11). Eventually, the cities became the centers for the technical and social innovation that gave rise to centers of wealth accumulation, while the countryside became the civilization” (Bairoch 1988, 336). Greater production also allowed source of natural resource extraction and raw food production. for the freeing of the labor of persons who could develop other People who could gather the surplus created by the new systems areas of human commerce such as manufacturing, art, research, were therefore able to use the cities as centers of accumulation and governance. Because of this, larger and larger communities and consumption. of people engaged in the exchange of produce, ideas, and labor. Perhaps, this is why one of the defining characteristics of the Thus, greater inventiveness and innovation was made possible. city is its separation from nature (Tuan 1978, 1). Tuan attempts to The drivers of innovation were born of the commerce of a greater define the universal aspects of cities thus: number of persons freed from the search for sustenance who could engage each other in large centers of human exchange. The Cities, then, may be ranked according to how far they depart from farm life, cities, being centers of trade, attracted various persons from other from the agricultural rhythm of peak activity in the warm half of the year, centers of innovation and invention, so that ideas were exchanged and from the cycle of work during the day and of sleep at night. At one end and shared more freely and quickly. Bairoch further claims that the of the scale we have the village subordinate to nature; at the other, the city city “unquestionably encourages innovation itself in the broadest that does not know how it is fed, that comes alive in winter and slights the sense of the word and its diffusion” for the following reasons: daily course of the sun. (1)

First, the higher population density in cities facilitates human contacts, Urban life is defined more than anything by its being less deter- thereby accelerating the flow of information. Second, the diversity of urban mined by nature and more by the human capacity to shape nature activities quite naturally encourages attempts to apply or adopt in one or the “anthropocentric reconfiguration of natural processes and sector (or in one specific problem areas) technological solutions adopted their products” (Dear and Flusty 1988, 60). This is because the in another sector. Third, cities tend to concentrate educational activities city exists to extract resources from nature, and then to trans- that throughout history have combined teaching and, if not research in the form these resources into commodities. The people of the city do modern sense of the term, at least a certain systematic reflection. Fourth, not directly extract the resources from nature, however. The rural the urban milieu provides a natural refuge for original spirits ill at ease in areas are engaged in this activity. But the city exists to gather these rural areas where the pressure to conform is, as a rule, stronger. Last but resources into tradable goods. The city, to emphasize, only handles not least, the city is, par excellence, the point of contact with other cities by commodities that can directly be transformed into wealth. From way of trade and through migration of artisans, laborers, and clerical and their beginning, cities have existed for a kind of commerce that administrative staff between different cities. (336). exploits nature’s resources which are extracted for it by its neighboring rural communities. This exploitation of nature eventually The other driver for innovation was the possibility of creating leads to the exploitation of the peripheral communities that serve surplus value. With the surplus of production, trade could be the city. We can see the evolution of this relationship of extraction carried out as a focus of human activity, and with this commerce, clearly in the evolution of Metro Manila. certain groups of people could begin to gather the surplus produce The urban centers in the Philippines are certainly the centers of and create profit. Naomi Miller and Wilma Weterstorm have been commerce and wealth creation. They continue to hold the preemi- quoted by Roberts as saying, for instance, that surplus “produced nent position they have held since their creation in colonial times: an impetus toward developments we associate with civilization: that is, as the main links between the local people and the wider urbanization, a high degree of economic specialization, and social world market. However, before the coming of the Spaniards, there 200 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 201 was no urban life to speak of in the country (Bairoch 1988, 48). prohibited (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, 61). In this way, the Certainly there were large centers of trade, one of the largest being local economy was reshaped to serve not the people at the grass- the settlement that was to become the city of Manila. However, roots, but the Spanish colonial enterprise. Communities of people this was not a city or urban center as these are defined by those who could support their way of life according to their systems of who study cities, but a large agricultural or fishing community (49). production and solidarity were transformed to a vulnerable class Large settlements in pre-Hispanic Philippines were mostly centers that existed to serve the colonists and enrich them. People who of trade where some form of production existed but these settle- lived in barangays, whose social and economic capital was based ments were also as involved in the production of their own food on clan relations, were, as a result, forced to live in larger commu- and the gathering of their own raw materials. In fact, most of the nities which served tribute and resource extraction. Even their archipelago’s populations dwelled in productive communities that traditional leaders (who ruled the people according to a system of engaged in trade with each other. Before the coming of the colonial mutual protection and support) were transformed by the Spaniards powers, there was no center of political or economic power that to petty elite who collected tributes and taxes for the crown and ruled large territories or a conglomeration of communities such eventually, these traditional leaders were able to acquire some of that this same center extracted its needs from the territories it the former communal lands for their private gain—a move made dominated. The Spanish colonial interests, however, changed all possible by their knowledge of the colonial system and the natives’ this. confusion over the Spanish concept of land ownership (Abinales At the onset of colonization, with the creation of semi-urban and Amoroso 2005, 57). centers, where the poblacion was the center and the peripheries With this process of reduction, which Abinales and Amoroso were known as the barrio (Francia 2010, 67–68), we begin to see the (2005, 60) refer to as a “major socio economic rupture with the past imposition of an alien rationality upon the local populace. From in a relatively short time” (mostly within the sixteenth century), the subsistence communities, the natives are forced to live in towns creation of urban centers were made possible. What was created where their own production and livelihood is tied to the interests during the Spanish colonial period was a system of forced labor, of the ruling elite. At first, they produce in order to pay the tributes tribute, and church contributions that drained the locals of their of the colonial administration, and later they will begin to change resources in order to support the continuing colonization of the their farming and land ownership patterns to supply the cash crop islands and Spanish trade (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, 62). To trade which emerged in the nineteenth century. Persons who were quote the authors, used to planting subsistence crops in barangay commons for theirs and their clan’s needs were forced to plant cash crops first in plots Effects included population decline, the abandonment of cleared and assigned to them in the outskirts of the newly created towns and cultivated fields, and the disruption of interisland trade. Yet the new state, later in haciendas owned by the friars and Spanish crusaders and as described above, was determined to collect tributes, now owed to the officials or administered by Chinese-Filipino mestizos. This colo- Spanish king in compensation for the conquest, conversion, and rule of nial transformation dispossessed the people because it enlisted the Philippines. More practically speaking, the influx into the cities of them into a system where they had no control over the means of foreign soldiers, missionaries, officials, and traders put greater demand on production, as these were, by that time, technically owned by the food production. Resettlement therefore included a new land-tenure and crown and later by the economic elite who participated in the inter- land-use system. (60–61) national cash crop trade system. In early colonial times, whatever the natives produced was taxed by the crown, and because people Thus, the reduccion process which began the whole conquest were restricted from their free movement, trade was essentially and transformation of the local world is aptly named. As the word 202 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 203 denotes, it succeeded in reducing the otherness of the local popu- of cash incomes. At this point, the provinces existed as the periph- lace, their economic, political, and dwelling systems to the totality eries that supported the economy of the center. People were drawn which was the Spanish colonial mechanism. The colonial enter- to Manila because they lost their land, and then ended up working prise hoped to reduce all otherness to a system of the same so that for the landed elite who exploited them with low wages and unfa- the totality served the interests of the colonizer. Ways of dwelling vorable share cropping conditions (80–81). Abinales and Amoroso and engaging nature and other people were disrupted so that the claim that “The uneven impact of these economic changes devas- people could support a system they neither benefited from nor tated rural populations” (83). We can say that the growth and devel- desired. It also created a system where the center of commerce opment of the urban center was fed by this devastation of the rural was supported by the populace that did not benefit from its exist- populations. The rural populations, of course, had many reasons ence. Because the pre-Hispanic Philippine civilization had no for migrating to the city, but all their reasons could be rooted in urban systems, the imposition of urban systems therefore meant the fact that most incomes worth earning are concentrated in the the imposition of an other lifeworld on the native population city and people in the rural peripheries were exploited by the elite which was disruptive to the native economic and social systems. It who controlled the opportunities for earning. These opportunities also conscripted the whole archipelago’s population into a system are available to them due to their connection to the global, export which served the commerce of the capital as a portal to the world economy. Things have not changed much today, except that urban economy. centers seem to have decisively justified their central position in At the center of this process of reduction was the city of Manila. societies. They are “legitimized” by the “ideology of capitalism” Up to the seventeenth century, native communities supported the for their contribution to the nation’s GNP. Urban centers are still population in Manila as the center of the Spanish administration “parasitic” upon the rural areas for their growth and development and the Galleon Trade. However, with the coming of the seven- (Gilbert and Gugler 1992, 14–15). The difference is that today there teenth century, the city grew into a cosmopolitan center that drew is an interlinked network of cities all serving the world economic not only its sustenance from the production of the countryside, but system that extracts resources from the resource rich rural areas also, eventually, even the cash crops it traded to the outside. This (15). meant that the small farms (later haciendas) would exist to supply It is important to note that the urbanization of the non-Western cash crops to the city of Manila and later Cebu and Iloilo with trad- world was rooted in the “intrusion of industrial capitalism and able crops that the natives could not use for their own sustenance. imperialism” which built the economies of the Western world (16). As Filipinos were drawn deeper and deeper into the cash economy This describes the development of Third World cities up to the for health, education, taxation, and other needs, and as they were twentieth century: deprived of the means of earning a living in their own hometowns, they were drawn more into the ambit of the city of Manila which Throughout the “traditional world” Europeans destroyed, transformed, or provided income-generating opportunities for the natives. This is distorted indigenous civilizations. The newly founded cities reflected the especially true because their being drawn to the cash crop produc- new power structures and exercised functions relevant to the interests tion system and the cash economy led to the loss of their lands of Europe. They were beginning to become part of a world economic and to people who were providing them with cash loans. As a result, social system. (16) these same Filipinos would eventually have to pay for with their productive land (Abinales and Amoroso 2005, 81). Cities in the third world emerged as a response to the need The city of Manila grew dramatically with the rise of the export of global capitalism for raw materials and markets as well as a of cash crops, as well as when the city became the major source source of labor. The people from traditional rural communities 204 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 205 were conscripted into this far-reaching system and were rendered populations that find the cosmopolitan systems alien to their as a marginalized people dependent on the cities for survival and rationalities (Lowder 1986, 36). The global city can only exist with income generation because their land and traditional sources of the cheap labor provided by the labor of its partially western- their basic needs—notably the land and the natural resources it ized or non-westernized populations. In Metro Manila, since its provided were already appropriated for the needs of the global Americanization at the turn of the century, peoples from tradi- market. tional communities have flocked to the city to provide this labor. Attracted by the opportunities to earn incomes more easily acces- The Cracks in the Concrete World sible in the city, they came to build communities in spaces available As cities are developed to become hubs of the global market, to them (Alcazaren, Ferrer, and Icamina 2010, 8). These peoples they are made to bear the uniformity of consumer societies. Thus, of traditional, rural communities have established communities world-class malls have opened to sell the same brands or brands in abandoned places of the original city or in undeveloped lands that emulate the styles of Western fashions, world-class homes within or at the peripheries of the expanding metro. For instance, have been built according to the living standards of the cosmo- as the Manila elite moved from Intramuros to other parts of the city, politan city dwellers, and world-class educational institutions are the landless moved into the derelict buildings of the walled city. established according to the scientific and academic standards set They also lived in the peripheries of factories and later along the by Western gatekeepers of legitimate knowledge. Even businesses edges of walled villages of the wealthy families (53). These centers are established according to systems and mechanisms determined of what Alcazaren calls centers of informality, or the centers of by Western praxis. As cities develop, they Westernize. After all, an other way of dwelling, mirror the ways of dwelling born from development equates to Westernization. The elite populations of their traditional ways of living. These are communities of face-to- cities begin to mimic the Western or global means and modes of face networks of solidarity bound by kinship ties and mutual care expression, the global lexicon of the good life, as well as adapt networks (Alcazaren, Ferrer, and Icamina 2010, 65). As much as this values and aspirations of the world’s elite. However, Berner points is a strategy for survival, this is also a way of being that they chose out that to preserve because as they build their homes in the cracks of the Westernized city, at the same time they seek a sense of the good The city’s integration into the global society does not take place in toto— community and a sense of their shared self (Berner 2010, 9). Local only its social, economic, and spatial parts. Most obvious are the changes slums in the Philippines were structured according to the barrio. at the highest level. Managers and professionals concentrate in places that Their communal structures were built according to traditional can be viewed as parts of a single world city rather than of the city they communities with similar social capital networks; there, houses belong to in a geographical and administrative sense. (2010, 2–3) echoed the architecture of the bahay kubo or nipa hut, and their spaces were built in such a way that repeats, in confined spaces, In the city, there are enclaves of modernity or global culture the commons of rural communities. The slums of Metro Manila, that host the commerce of the dominant, Westernized popula- meanwhile, are the cracks in its global, developed facade. These tions. These enclaves are closed off by walls and policies. These are the spaces where the other to Western development rational- realms function according to the rationality of the global city and ities quietly assert their subversive presence. On the other hand, its requirements. the informal settlers brought with them their own rural rationali- However, as the world globalizes and adapts to modern ways, ties, and this is true even for those who already dwelt within the there are populations within the city that are arguably still of the environs which would be included or reduced to the metropolis. traditional world order, to a lesser or greater extent. These are Places such as Payatas, Diliman, and Marikina—which were mainly 206 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 207 agricultural lands—bore populations which were rural in their life- be transferable or recyclable, and spaces must have multiple use, worlds and rationalities. One aspect of their lifeworlds that reflects since in the first place there is not enough space. Thus, they have this encounter is their very dwellings and communal systems. no room dividers, and in order to also maximize space and keep When squatter colonies were formed, they shaped these differ- communal channels open, they have no clear structural division ently from the city planners’ conception of a shared living space. between the private and public spheres. Ferrer writes, In Ferrer’s (2010, 131) study of informal housing, he points out that the typical rural poor in the turn of the century took on the The mystery of informal settlement community building lies, not where aspects of the bahay kubo and the social life it engendered. The architects and planners expect it—on understanding abstract concepts of rural migrants or the populations incorporated into the growing physical forms and spaces—but in understanding and earning from the city took with them their own community structures and “concep- informed process that created them. The key it seems, would be to discover tions of space” (132). He notes that “The first ‘informal settlements’ the ‘timeless ways of building’ and to understand and apply the principles dwellings themselves mimicked bahay kubos with bamboo and inherent in the natural process of development to the design and planning thatch replaced by discarded plywood and tin” (132). Not only did of socialized housing and lower-income commodities. (2010, 141) the actual dwelling mimic the bahay kubo, it also mimicked the extension of the inside to the outside where the actual dwelling There is also an other rationality in their process of growth. extended beyond the structure to the outside spaces which were Communities and homes grow paunti-unti or a bit at a time based the parts of the dwelling where one met neighbors, washed clothes, on what materials are at hand, what they can afford at a particular played games, and relaxed to watch the day go by. In a traditional time, the landscape, and community configurations based on home, the outside was as important as the inside as a dwelling kinship ties and whatever alliances may exist in the community. place, and the house was designed to open to the community The design of homes and communities are based on communal which was the extension of their home. This is entirely different patterns of solidarity and mutual help, specifically. Even if it from the dominant, Westernized conception of habitable dwellings seems to the dominant rationality that there is no order to their with private spaces clearly delineated from the outside. It does not use of space or their aesthetic, there is a clear order. For example, reflect the structures of independence that value individuality and they have spaces for communal reflection (the sari-sari store privacy that the modern homes of the urban dweller structure. and porches that extend to the alleys) and spaces for recreation The traditional homes of informal dwellers, up to this day, reflect (mini-basketball courts) which are placed and designed according not only the sparse space in the city where the poor have to insert to their own concerns. Alcazaren, Ferrer, and Icamina (2010, 79) themselves, but also their valuing of community and social capital. note how “long spaces become the settlement’s main street, a Another manifestation of how the enclaves of informality are series of public plazas, markets, playgrounds, and extensions of different from the dominant rationality of the city is how they “plan” living rooms for the residents. The nature of the space is non-linear their dwellings. The formal government has established codes for and is set by the function, the users, days of the week, and the time the number and size of windows, number of steps in relation to use, of day.” Thus, railways become gathering places and main thor- types of doors, foundations, and supports including the number oughfares. Because these are shared spaces, they are constantly of square meters are necessary for a person to be able to dwell negotiated. This is why government planning and impositions properly. The marginalized, in contrast, clearly do not conform to disrupt the community. It disrupts the community aspiration to these building codes. They have their own building codes based on foster solidarity and social capital formation when it imposes the a complex multiplicity of considerations, including the possibility dominant meaning of space and land use, as well as the design of of unpredictable eviction and demolition; thus, all materials must local populations. 208 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 209

I only discuss the informal settler in this essay because, as the that are being posed are often entrenched within the global order world consolidates the web of cities to serve global production, that created the problem in the first place. Its solutions are always consumption, and wealth creation, and as this system leads us to drawn from traditional Western conceptions of development and perdition with the multiple crises it has caused—like the corrosion growth-driven economies. of topsoil, the extinction of multiple species, the end of potable The infusion of other perspectives and points of view are neces- water, and especially global warming—we need fissures in the sary to enrich the dominant rationality’s conception of the good hegemony to show us an other way of being in the world. The exist- society. The city, being a dynamic center of a plurality of rationali- ence of informal settlements, or settlements of informality in the ties, bears the possibility of stimulating the awakening of rational- city that seeks to reduce all otherness to the totality of the world- ities to other ways of thinking civilization because of its capacity wide web of cities that serve global commerce, thereby signals the to be a center of discourse of the multiverse of rationalities. From reality that not all peoples can be reduced to this single ration- the beginning, it has been the central hub that gathers all kinds ality. In fact, their existence signals the truth that the other will of people in concentrated spaces to bring about the most intense always reassert itself in the fissures of the cemented whole. Like exchange of ideas. The cities can again play the role of hothouse of grass growing in the cracks of pavements, the other lifeworld that innovation by genuinely facilitating the discourse between ration- is other than the Westernized totality, will always assert itself, and alities. The city must be able to create systems of discourse between the systematic rationality cannot fully encompass the dwellings of rationalities at the center and the periphery. But these systems peoples. There will always be competing conceptions of the good of engagement must also be just systems of dialogue in order to and humane dwelling. And as cities exist today, with the powerful genuinely enrich the dominant rationality. As they exist today, the assertion of the dominant, global rationality, the other rationalities marginalized exist only in the peripheries of the discourse that can only exist in the fissures or the margins of cities. However, as shapes the global world order. They must be placed at the center we come to realize that this dominant rationality and its logic of of the discourse because the global world order that has appropri- development is potentially destructive of our species, it needs to be ated their world is also potentially adversely reshaping their world meaningfully challenged. and they must have a say in reforming the global world order, as Of course, this does not mean that the spread of Western ration- it is also this order that has usurped their lifeworlds without their ality and its systems has not allowed for new possibilities of human freely given consent. flourishing. Certainly, it has. The quality of human life has arguably This essay engaged the realities of informal communities that improved and new possibilities of realizing human existence have dwell in the city because these communities best illustrate how the clearly been realized because of the spread of Western civilization city attracts other rationalities and admits the flourishing of these and the dominant global system. However, the dominant ration- rationalities in its peripheries. In their flourishing, these rational- ality that supports and is supported by the global network of cities ities become part of the multiplicity of voices that shape the city. has clearly reached an impasse. The global city network and the However, as they are structured today, cities only admit these other production and consumption system it supports has led to today’s voices in their peripheries. As we have seen, they find a way to more threatening crises. Global warming and all its accompanying build communities that make sense to them within the structures effects, the destruction of the world’s biomes, and the threat to imposed by the dominant rationality. They have no place in shaping humanity of the loss of potable water, arable land, and the ante- the dominant rationality in a significant way and thus leave intact cedent social unrest are all caused by this global economic system the destructive tendencies that the global economy supports. This supported by the global city network. We need, as a result, new is a concrete metaphor of how the other rationalities that strive perspectives to respond to these crises. However, the only solutions to shape a human world order can discourse with the dominant 210 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ 211 system. resources for Western defined economic growth and development. These But if humanity is to creatively engage the catastrophic changes cities were built as centers where people from Europe or European-based civilizations could live in the alien climes in ways that approximated what that face us, we must be able to create a free space for the discourse they understood were human lives, in order for them to have outposts for of various rationalities that will help humanity critique the domi- commerce—mainly economic, but also cultural and political. Moreover, nant vision of development the network of cities support. If cities the author still subscribes to the idea of a Western civilization because the manage to be the nodes of free discourse, this can initiate genuine colonized worlds experienced a profound imposition of alien cultures that were disastrous to them. This dislocation of the lives of vast populations reform. As nodes of discourse, cities will open the just discourse of was accomplished to serve the flourishing or development of the impos- rationalities to the global system of cities engaged in commerce. ing peoples. Thus, it is still useful for this paper to refer to the historically Thus, cities, which are the nodes of hegemony, can be the very colonizing countries as coming from the Western civilizations. These are instrument that breaks the global hegemony to create a new world the civilizations that have organized the global economy as it exists today, as a system of production-consumption-wealth-accumulation that has at order that is just and sustainable. its core the enframing technologies, as well as production and wealth ac- We must ask ourselves though if this is possible. Can the city be cumulations systems developed by and imposed by the colonizing West. the dynamic host of a fair and just discourse? Perhaps, but this will Although effectively the frame of all existing civilizations, they are still ex- be difficult. The city is already structured according to a dominant perienced as alien and other. rationality and its logic. It is already oriented to favor the legitimacy of that rationality. Thus, its governments, its civil societies, its References universities, and its enterprises all exist to support its own reason. Abinales, Patricio N. and Donna J. Amoroso. 2005. State and Society in the Phil- Perhaps, it is truly incumbent upon the margins, to the others who ippines. Pasig City: Anvil Press. Alcazaren, Paulo, Luis Ferrer, and Benvenuto Icamina. 2010. Lungsod Iskwater: are not completely of this web of global urbanity, to break open the The Evolution of Informality as a Dominant Pattern in Philippine Cities. Pasig logic of the urban for it to accept the possibilities of other ways City: Anvil Publishing. of dwelling. This may happen when we realize that our cities are Bairoch, Paul. 1988. Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History not sustainable and we are driven to look to other rationalities to to the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berner, Erhard. 2010. Defending a Place in the City: Localities and the Struggle for ensure our survival. But hopefully, before that painful time comes, Land in Metro Manila. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing. the other rationalities will find a way to bring new perspectives Dear, Michael and Steven Flusty. 1998. “Postmodern Urbanism.” Annals of the to the web of cities that have caught us in the logic of extinction. Association of American Geographers 88 (1): 50–72. Ferguson, Niall. 2011. Civilization: The West and the Rest. London: Penguin Books. Ferrer, Luis M. 2010. “The Dimensions of Informal and Social Housing.” InLung - Endnotes sod Iskwater: The Evolution of Informality as a Dominant Pattern in Philippine 1. This work was made possible by funding from the Philippine Higher Educa- Cities, edited by Paulo Alcazaren, Luis Ferrer, and Benvenuto Icamina. Pasig tion Research Network (PHERNet). City: Anvil Publishing.

2. This is a running argument inNiall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Francia, Luis H. 2010. A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipi- Rest (London: Penguin Books, 2011). nos. New York: The Overlook Press. 3. In this essay, I shall retain the word the West to refer to that civilization that Gilbert, Alan and Josef Gugler. 1992. Cities, Poverty, and Development: Urbaniza- colonized the world in the last 400 years. Although, for some critics, espe- tion in the Third World. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. cially Western trained ones, the use of the word is a simplistic generaliza- ———. 1992. Urbanization in the Third World. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University tion, the author believes that it is useful for this essay. The primary reason, Press. the author will argue, is that these civilizations, which are being imposed Lowder, Stella. 1986. Inside Third World Cities. London: Croom Helm. in the global world order, were primarily developed in the colonizing na- Roberts, Paul. 2009. The End of Food. New York: Mariner Books. tions in Western Europe. The essay will reflect on how the cities built in the Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1978. “The City: Its Distance from Nature.”Geographical Review 68 colonized nations were primarily created as outposts for the extraction of (1): 1–12. 212 The City and the Dynamism of Invention and Exploitation

REMMON E. BARBAZA

The City as Illusion and Promise1

“Die Wüste wächst. Weh dem, der Wüsten birgt.” – F. Nietzsche

“Although it looks like a tomato, it’s kind of a notional tomato. It’s the idea of a tomato.” – from the documentary film, Food, Inc.

SA SIMULA, siya’y isang kalansay na nakatalalan sa hangin. Isang matayog, buhaghag na bunton ng patapong mga piraso ng tablang gato, mabukbok, mabitak, masalubsob, pilipit, kubikong, na pinagpaku-pako nang patayo, pahalang, patulibas, kabit-kabit nang walang wawa, tulag ng kahig-manok sa lupa, at dito’t sisingit ang mga tadyang na bakal at ang mga yero at mga playwud at mga lawanit upang saluhin ang buhos ng labusaw na halo ng tubig, graba, buhangin, semento, at ang malabsang sangkap ay sisiksik at titigib sa hulmahan, matutuyo, titigas, yayakap sa mga tadyang na bakal at sa mga bitukang tubo. Bawat buhos ng malabsang sangkap ay karagdagang laman ng kanyang katawan, karagdagang guhit sa tutunguhing anyo. Unti-unting paglapad at pagtaas ng katawang konkreto. Kikinisin siya, damdamitan ng salamin, tisa, marmol at pormika, hihilamusan ng kulay upang umalindog ang kanyang balat. At sa kanyang ganap na pakaluwal ay bibinyagan siya, at ang pangalan niya’y iuukit sa tanso. Sa simula, siya’y isang kalansay na nakatalalan sa hangin. Pagyayamanin siya, maglalaman at lulusog sa dilig ng pawis at dugo. At siya’y matatayo nang buong tatag, lakas at tibay, naghuhumindig at nagtutumayog sa kapangyarihan, samantalang sa kanyang paana ay

213 214 The City as Illusion and Promise REMMON E. BARBAZA 215 naroon at lugmok, lupaypay, sugatan, duguan, nagtingala sa kanyang surrounded by shiny and glitzy high-rise buildings and skyscrapers, kataasan, ang mga nagpala sa kanya. which evoke progress, affluence, modernity, and power. For sure, Sa simula, siya’y isang kalansay na nagpapahabag, at nagwakas na to some extent what they portray are true, but not entirely the isang makapangyarihan, palalong diyos. (Reyes 2007, 1–2) truth. For such material realities as shiny, modern high-rise buildings could not have come to be without the power and capabilities [In the beginning it was a skeleton struggling in the air. A towering, loose of the workers who built them through their physical and mental heap of thrown-off pieces of rotten wood, worm-ridden, split, splintered, powers. One can have all the money in the world, and the best twisted, cubiform, nailed standing, jutting, crossing, senselessly cobbled engineers and architects, but without these construction workers, together, like chicken scratches in the dirt, and here will joint the steel ribs, these buildings will not come to be. They do not grow on their own galvanized iron, plywood and particle board to catch the turbidly flowing like trees, or sprout like wild plants. They have to be deliberately mixture of water, gravel, sand and cement, and the pulped material will built and erected, through the work of human hands. squeeze into and overfill the mold, dry, harden, embrace the steel ribs and Reyes’s graphic description of the illusion that is the city is for the pipe intestines. Every pour of pulped material is added flesh on its body, sure informed by Marxian thought, specifically that of alienation. an added line to the intended figure. The skeleton of wood will slowly be We know, however, that Marxian thought is premised on materi- swept away as the concrete body slowly widens and rises. It will be polished, alist metaphysics, so that all reality is reducible to the material, dressed in glass, tile, marble and formica, facewashed with color to pretty its including the realities in which the human species finds itself. While skin. And at its complete birth it will be christened and its name engraved it remains to be one of the most, if not the most, tenable theory of in bronze. the material basis of the human condition—with all its drama and In the beginning it was a skeleton struggling in the air. It will be enriched, contradictions—it cannot, however, go beyond the question of how fattened and given health by the watering of sweat and blood. And it will such a material reality appears to the human being, particularly stand in perfect stability, strength and sturdiness, erect and towering in as worker. Nor can it consider the question where the compulsion power, while at its feet are—and prostrate, collapsed, wounded, bloody, faces to build these magnificent structures, at such great human cost, turned upwards to its height—the ones who shoveled it. might come from. For it is not the case that the material “just In the beginning it was a pathetic skeleton; in the end a powerful, arro- lies there,” and the human being simply apprehends it. Rather, the gant god. (Scalice [Trans.] 2016) human being, as worker for instance, already stands in a prior relation to the material world, a relation that is not of his own making. The paragraphs quoted abovein extenso are from the opening pages When Marx depicted the fate of the Gattungswesen or species- of Edgardo M. Reyes’s contemporary classic Filipino novel, Sa mga being, he did so while still within the presupposition of a particular Kuko ng Liwanag (In the Claws of Light), made even more popular being or realm of being—namely the material, as the basis of by its 1975 film adaptation (Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag or all reality, in quite a logical and no doubt rigorous manner. But Manila in the Claws of Light) by the acclaimed director Lino Brocka. the material alone cannot account for this consciousness of the How does it happen that what was once simply a “pathetic skel- species-being, nor can it allow us to consider what we mean when eton” in the end is transformed into “a powerful, arrogant god”? In we say that “matter simply is,” as if that begs no further question. Reyes’s depiction of the building that was just erected, something Heidegger was one such thinker who ventured to think, by way is being shown and something else being covered over. Something of phenomenology, within the realm of being, as well as the rela- is deliberately manufactured and made to appear, while another tion of being that is prior to whatever it is that the human being is being hidden behind. When one walks, for instance, on the concerns itself with, whether in everyday material concerns, or in streets of the central business district of any city, one will likely be philosophical questioning. Thinking the city as an illusion through 216 The City as Illusion and Promise REMMON E. BARBAZA 217 the thoughts of both Marx and Heidegger might yield even richer saw that the relation between the urban and the rural—or as the insights. In Heidegger’s widely influential essay, “The Question British like to call it, between the country and the city—was being Concerning Technology,” we read the following passage: radically transformed, that the traditional peasantry was disappearing and that the rural was being urbanized” (xv). The forester who, in the wood, measures the felled timber and to all appear- The staggering implication is clear, as Harvey cannot avoid to ances walks the same forest path in the same way as did his grandfather state: the city no longer exists. The “right to the city,” if not the city is today commanded by profit-making in the lumber industry, whether he itself, becomes “an empty signifier” (xv). knows it or not. He is made subordinate to the orderability of cellulose, What if, indeed, the city as we know it no longer existed? What which for its part is challenged forth by the need for paper, which is then if it is now merely an illusion? These questions no doubt may strike delivered to newspapers and illustrated magazines. The latter, in their turn, readers as outrageous, or simply empty provocations. They fly in set public opinion to swallowing what is printed, so that a set configuration the face of general estimates of the growing population in urban of opinion becomes available on demand. (1977, 18) areas, which put the figure anywhere between 50 and 70 percent of the total population in the world. And the trend points toward The passage speaks of subordination, one that is kept hidden a steady increase, and not decrease. from the one who is subordinated. At the same time, it speaks of Of course, one can simply dismiss this provocation by saying an illusion: “to all appearances [the forester] walks the same forest that it all depends on what we mean by “city,” and that depending path in the same way as did his grandfather” (emphasis supplied). on one’s definition of the city one can affirm its existence, or, along It only appears to the forester and to anyone observing him that he with Lefebvre and Harvey, declare its non-existence. The question is doing exactly what his grandfather did in the past. But in reality, of the city’s existence therefore would seem to be simply arbitrary, he is made subordinate to something else. Perhaps he knows it, as arbitrary as the definition which one happens to adopt. perhaps not. In any case, it is only an illusion that everything is as But perhaps definitions are not the place to begin our present it used to be. inquiry. Our reflection might just bear more fruit if, instead, we The illusion is not only about what today’s forester does. The proceed from the shared experience of the city, its common illusion also concerns the distinction between the city and the conceptions, and then from there determine what we can make province. It only appears that everything is as it used to be between of Lefebvre’s and Harvey’s prognosis, especially its implications for the city and the province, but in reality, both the city and the prov- our future. ince are subordinated to something else. Both have been coopted, For now, we can also look at it this way: the city both does and subsumed under something more decisive and powerful that holds does not exist. Like most of the food that we eat, we say, of course, sway over everything. And if the distinction between the province that we have food on the table. But when we consider, for example, and the city is dissolved by virtue of their common subordination, that in all likelihood the chicken meat we eat comes from poultry so too, the city as city and the province as province. It only appears that had been fed arsenic-containing drugs meant to promote so that in our present age, there are still cities and there are still growth of chicken but are otherwise known to be toxic to humans, provinces. then in another real (and more crucial) sense, we can also say that To be sure, it is not only Heidegger who points to such an illusion the food on our table is not really food, but poison. It just looks like concerning the city and the province. For instance, David Harvey food, but it really is poison, its harm albeit not instant but gradual reminds us that “it was Lefebvre’s central conclusion that the city and imperceptible (Peng et al. 2017). we had once known and imagined was fast disappearing and that it In the 2008 documentary film,Food, Inc., investigative reporter could not be reconstituted” (2012, xiv). Furthermore, “Lefebvre also Eric Schlosser points to a sampling of food items we normally 218 The City as Illusion and Promise REMMON E. BARBAZA 219 purchase at the supermarket, saying, “There are no seasons in the to do and never heeded Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach—at American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, least forces upon us to inquire into what the city is to begin with. grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, and For only when we come to an understanding of what the city is, ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, it’s kind can we come to a decision whether indeed it no longer exists, as of a notional tomato. It’s the idea of a tomato.” Knowing the process well as in what sense, and therefore remains nothing more than through which much of our food go through until we consume just an illusion. them, we realize that indeed what we call food is in reality not What is at stake in raising this question, viz., whether the city food, but poison. They make us sick. The animals that are raised still exists, or whether it is now simply an illusion? The answer like they were products in factories are sick the whole time (the should eventually emerge to be clear: everything. In so far as urban chickens, for one, are kept in dark tunnels, never seeing light), life is the life majority of the global human population live, and in from the time the chicks are hatched from eggs, to the point when so far as the trend points toward greater and greater urbanization, their bodies are “engineered” to produce bigger breasts to meet the in so far as this way of life shapes every aspect of our human exist- demand for white meat (in the movie the chickens are shown to ence—our ways of producing and consuming, the ways we educate, have grown so heavy they could barely make three steps at a time, entertain, and maintain ourselves, etc., etc.—then everything is at and just drop on the ground in exhaustion), and finally when they stake in raising the question. end up on our plates for us to consume. But let us first consider the city according to common experi- One is reminded of the controversial and widely misunder- ence and conception, which precedes any theoretical considera- stood passage in “The Question Concerning Technology,” where tion of its existence or non-existence. How do we conceive of and Heidegger (1977, 15) says that “agriculture is now the mechanized experience the city? First of all, we recognize a feeling of ambiva- food industry,” and thus essentially is not concerned about feeding lence concerning the city as it stands in relation to nature. On the us or providing us with food, where food is still understood as the one hand, the city is walled off from nature. Nature, with all things nourishment of the human body by something that promotes its wild and untamed in it, is kept at bay. On the other hand, the city potential for well-being and flourishing. does not want to be completely severed from nature, and wants In the same documentary film, there are hints of the disappear- to keep itself “green” by ensuring that a substantial part of it is ance of the distinction between the city and the province, between devoted to parks and greenery. the urban and the rural, when the former encroaches upon the Thus, the first experience and conception of the city is in rela- latter and organizes it in such a way as to meet its demands and tion to nature, whether for or against it, or ambivalent toward it. requirements. In Rebel Cities, Harvey claims that “the traditional The city is conceived of and experienced with reference to nature. city has been killed by rampant capitalist development, a victim One might say that the farther one is from the city, the closer one of the never-ending need to dispose of overaccumulating capital can be to nature. The man-versus-nature dichotomy is likewise driving towards endless and sprawling urban growth no matter reflected in the city’s ambivalence toward nature in so far as the what the social, environmental, or political consequences” (2012, city is built by man. City-versus-nature is a specific instance of xv–xvi). man-versus-nature. These dichotomies are also expressed in the What if, like the tomato in the supermarket, the city that we opposition between nature and nurture, where nurture is distin- assume we live in is no longer really a city, but merely the idea of a guished by the human factor. city? What if the city is now indeed merely an illusion? One might thus see the city-province, urban-rural, town-country The question of whether the city no longer exists—far from being dichotomies in relation to nature. Between the city and the prov- an empty preoccupation of philosophers who have nothing better ince, it is the province that we experience ourselves as being closer 220 The City as Illusion and Promise REMMON E. BARBAZA 221 to nature. The farther from the city, the more we are in the prov- waters flow, the opposite of which is “hulò;” that is, where the ince, the closer are we to nature. But since the province itself is waters are flowing from (Almario, 2014). not nature that is completely tamed, perhaps we can think of the Still, “traveling to Manila” does not fully capture what is province as somewhere in between nature and the city, though expressed in luwás, for the verb does not just mean to travel, but decidedly closer to nature than it is to the city. even more so connotes the trip to a distant place, one which The geographer Yi-Fu Tuan indeed has proposed distance from requires a significant amount of psychological will and readiness nature as the least arbitrary criteria in determining whether, and to embrace the interruption of one’s accustomed way of life, both to what extent, a place is a city. Thus, instead of a clear-cut and of which are demanded by the journey. It is thus no ordinary travel, black-and-white distinction between the rural and the urban, what but travel to the Other of the province. And after this interruption we have, rather, is a spectrum of cities according to their distance in one’s life, one returns home. One says “Uuwi ko” (I am returning from the natural rhythm of human life: home) after the luwás. In what way does the city represent and embody the Other of The problem is to conceive of a scale that is least arbitrary. The one I the province? From the perspective of the province, the city is the shall explore is idea that cities are artifacts and worlds of artifice placed site of progress and modernity, of science and technology. We speak at varying human conditions close to nature. I assume that a life close to of “city-smart,” pointing to the liberal and smart ways of the urban nature is bound to food production and to the needs of survival, that it dweller, as opposed to the naïve and backward probinsiyano. The follows closely the natural rhythms of day and night and of the seasons. Filipino slang promdi is used derogatively or condescendingly to refer to people who came “from the (hence the promdi) province.” Cities, then, may be ranked according to how far they depart from farm life, Thus, the city appears to possess the allure, glitter, and glamor of from the agricultural rhythm of peak activity in the warm half of the year, modernity, as well as holds the promise of redemption from stag- and from the cycle of work during the day and of sleep at night. At one end nation in the rural life. Always on the move, teeming with color and of the scale we have the village subordinate to nature; at the other, the city brimming with excitement, the city is a place that never sleeps. that does not know how it is fed, that comes alive in winter and slights the On the other hand, from the perspective of city dwellers who daily course of the sun. (Tuan 1978, 1–2) are stressed out by their job, the province is the place where they can retreat into, a refuge close to nature, and thus is also a venue Although the measurable distance between cities, as in one that for feeling rejuvenated and recharged. It is, therefore, a venue that can be covered only by air travel, is longer than that between the will hopefully help city dwellers feel refreshed upon their return city and the province, the city dweller who had planned “a weekend to work. Close to nature itself, the province offers the opportunity escape” into the countryside will traverse a distance that in a more for harassed urbanites to slow down and once again be immersed profound and experiential sense is longer. in his or her surroundings—a stark opposite to the experience in In Tagalog-speaking regions of the Philippines, the travel from the city where there seems to be a need for people to wear blin- the province to Manila is expressed by a single verb by itself, ders (like those worn by carriage horses) in order to be constantly namely, “luwas.” Thus,Luluwas ako bukas means, “I am travelling focused only on the immediate task, and thereby unable to linger to Manila tomorrow,” without even the need to mention Manila and be conscious of one’s immediate environment, let alone gain a as the destination. The verb itself indicates Manila in its meaning, broader perspective of it as a whole. and at least in modern times is not used in any other way. We learn Considered from the perspective of the origin of the city vis-à-vis from linguists and other language experts that the word originally the province, the question thus arises: experientially and concep- comes from “luwásan,” which refers to the place where the river tually, is the city the city in so far as it is not the province? That is 222 The City as Illusion and Promise REMMON E. BARBAZA 223 to say, can the city be conceived and experienced without relation Adult birds, for their part, have to “work” and “produce” food for to the province? Or vice versa? their birdlings to consume. If birds do not do the work of the day, Viewed historically and etymologically, the city-province as it were, if they do not make the effort to gather worms, their dichotomy is not the same as those between urban and rural, or birdlings would have nothing to consume. even town and country. Moreover, it is not without reason that In many different ways and in various degrees of complexities, the origin of the word “province” (Latin, provincia, of unknown we see this cycle of production and consumption in nature. Left to origin) came a century after the origin of the word “city” (from the its own devices, nature manifests a seamless cycle of production Old French cite, derived from the Latin civitas, “citizen”), from the and consumption, a beauty in itself that does not fail to inspire awe fourteenth and thirteenth centuries respectively. The city is a polit- in the human observer, provided he takes time to linger and open ical community established on the basis of a shared identity and his eyes to such natural processes unfolding before him. In such common political goals and economic aspirations. The province, a constant cycle, where matter is neither created nor destroyed, which connotes “charge” or “territory” (i.e., territory of a city), has there is neither overproduction nor overconsumption. Nature its origins in empires, particularly the Roman empire. As a territory finds its own balance. Nature is its own balance. of the empire, the province is an appendage of the city, colonized Interestingly, similar to Yuan above, Heidegger also points to in the service of the city to provide natural resources and human the preservation of the natural rhythm of human life in discussing labor. Even in contemporary usage, the word “province” refers the “fundamental character of dwelling” as one of “sparing and to expertise (that is, authority), as when one speaks of a certain preserving.” He writes, research topic as falling within his or her province. As an expert on the topic, he or she has the authority to speak about it. Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as sky. They leave to the sun and But now, whichever way we conceive of the relationship between the moon their journey, to the stars their courses, to the seasons their the city and the province (something that demands a separate and blessing and their inclemency; they do not turn night into day nor day into more thorough study), what if, following Lefebvre and Harvey, the a harassed unrest. (Heidegger 1971, 147–48) distinction no longer exists in so far as the city, and as well the province, is now but a mere illusion? When this natural rhythm, this delicate balance between If we are to proceed from the same assumptions on which the production and consumption, is disrupted, then we run into a analyses of Lefebvre and Harvey are based, especially the claim problem. When humans, for example, engage in overproduction or that “rampant capitalist development” led to the dissolution of overconsumption, then the balance is disrupted, and both nature the city as we knew it, and with it the levelling of the distinction and humans are affected. Capitalism, especially the unbridled between the city and the province, then we have to look squarely kind, is almost synonymous to consumption, or more specifically, into the question of capitalism, including the ways by which indeed to consumerism (although one might argue that the expression it “killed the city.” “unbridled capitalism” is redundant, since it can be established that Within the natural world, when left to its own devices (that is, it belongs to the nature of capitalism to run unbridled). Capitalism without human intervention), one observes a constant process of does, after all, thrive on consumerism. production and consumption. For instance, we know that photo- Take the case of Metro Manila. Each year, thousands of Filipinos synthesis is a natural process by which oxygen is generated, that migrate from the provinces to the megacity, in search of the good is to say, produced. It is a process by which a green plant, as it life. But many of them end up in urban poor communities, eking is exposed to light, converts water and carbon dioxide into food. out a living in whatever way they can, mostly through informal Animals, too, consume the oxygen produced through this process. labor, or else through employment in basic services or factories. 224 The City as Illusion and Promise REMMON E. BARBAZA 225

When in 2013 I interviewed some of the members of an urban poor how do we restore the balance? From where we are now, where community near the border between the cities of Caloocan and capitalism has ravaged both city and province, how can we reim- Navotas, who were temporarily sheltered in an evacuation center agine the possibility of the flourishing of both city and province along a major road and awaiting to be transported (in fact hauled in a way that fosters and maintains this delicate balance between in dump trucks), I asked them why they left their homes and fami- production and consumption? lies in their province, only to face a life of uncertainty, as they do Such questions, of course, are not merely scientific in nature now, not knowing what was in store for them as the government (economics, ecology, etc.). They are also eminently a question of moved to clear the area of the makeshift shelters. One of them justice. If so, we are led to ask: Concerning the city, what is the replied, “It is much harder to be poor in the province than in the task of justice? Heeding the suggestion of Lefebvre, Harvey says city.” Indeed, since many of them do not own the land they till in that “our political task . . . is to imagine and reconstitute a totally the provinces, and without any other property, they are driven by different kind of city out of the disgusting mess of a globalizing, necessity to flock to the city, where at worst, even a day’s worth urbanizing capital run amok. But that cannot occur without the of scavenging can give them an income to survive for at least a creation of a vigorous anti-capitalist movement that focuses on the day. Many others are creative enough to land in all sorts of odd transformation of daily urban life as its goal” (2012, xvi). jobs or engage in informal entrepreneurships, like selling various Surely, “a totally different kind of a city” is hard to imagine, let commodities to motorists held captive by monstrous traffic jams alone realize. An impossibility perhaps? But then what options do on main thoroughfares: items such as water, cigarettes, and in we have before us? Either we settle with the illusion that is the city some places even toys and gift items. of our age, or reimagine and work towards the realization of new But one cannot help but ask: why do the farmers, the ones who possibilities for the city, one that restores and respects the balance produce food, literally through their labor, end up not having food in nature that we have for so long forgotten and covered over with on the table? Why are the ones who produce food left with nothing our illusions. to consume? Conversely, why are the ones who do not produce (by Whatever decision we choose to make will determine the kind this I mean the production of basic needs sufficient for a decent, of cities we will have, and with them our collective future. human life), the ones who enjoy excesses of resources, and are also the ones who engage in a frenzy of consumption, way beyond what they could actually consume? Endnote Can it be said, in an age when the city is but an illusion, 1. This work was made possible by funding from the Philippine Higher Educa- when the distinction between the city and the province has been tion Research Network (PHERNet). dissolved, that the city is the place where people consume but do not produce? And conversely, the province is the place where References people produce but have nothing to consume? For how else do we Almario, Virgilio. 2014. “Saan Ba ang Luwasan?” Kulo at Kolorum, no. 6. Komi- account for farmers who have no food on the table, or carpenters syon sa Wikang Filipino. http://kwf.gov.ph/kulo-at-kolorum-6. Brocka, Lino, director. 1975. Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag. Philippines: Cin- and construction workers who build high-rise condominium build- ema Artists Philippines. ings and mansions in plush subdivisions but have themselves no Harvey, David. 2012. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to Urban Revolution. house to live in? Or health workers who cannot afford medical care Brooklyn: Verso. and hospitalization? Heidegger, Martin. 1971. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row. Does the city, as it is now (or, as it is not), embody the disruption of the balance between production and consumption? If so, 226 The City as Illusion and Promise

______. The Question Concerning Technology. WF Lovitt, Trans. New York: Harper & Row. Kenner, Robert and Elise Pearlstein, producers; Robert Kenner, director. 2008. Food, Inc. [Motion Picture]. USA: Magnolia Pictures. Peng, H., B. Hu. Q. Liu, J. Li, XF Li, H. Zhang and XC Le. 2017. “Methylated Phe- nylarsenical Metabolites Discovered in Chicken Liver.” Angewandte Chemie About the Authors 56 (24), 6 Jan., pp. 6679–7002. Reyes, Edgardo M. 2007. Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag. 2nd ed. Manila: C&E Pub- lishing, Inc. Scalice, Joseph, trans. 2016, Oct. 4. “Gusali/Building” [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://josephscalice.com/2016/10/gusali-building.

REMMON E. BARBAZA is associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities, Ateneo de Manila University. He holds a BA in Linguistics from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, an MA in Philosophy from the Ateneo de Manila University, and a PhD in Philosophy from the Hochschule für Philosophie in Munich, with a dissertation on Heidegger’s concept of dwelling, under the supervision of the late Prof. Dr. Gerd Haeffner, S.J. His research interests include Heidegger, language, translation, technology, environment, and the city.

JERIK CRUZ is a lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Economics, and a senior research associate at the Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development. His chapter for this volume is based on his dissertation for his master’s degree, which he completed at the Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies) of Geneva, Switzerland in 2016 as the Institute’s Prunier Foundation scholarship awardee. Prior to this, he worked in policy research organizations in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and in Europe, focusing on issues such as public finance, public services, and urban development. Beyond his university work, he is also involved in movements pressing for sustainable development, tax and fiscal justice, as well as inclusive and sustainable cities.

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GARY C. DEVILLES is an assistant professor and chair of the MICHAEL D. PANTE is an assistant professor at the Department Filipino Department at the Ateneo de Manila University Loyola of History, Ateneo de Manila University. He is also the associate Schools. He studied AB Philosophy, MA in Literature in Ateneo de editor of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints. Manila University and PhD Media Studies in La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include urban studies, sensory MARC OLIVER D. PASCO is a PhD candidate and is currently ethnography, and popular culture. His dissertation, “City Sense: An writing his dissertation on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger Interdisciplinary Approach to Sensing Manila” was the 2016 Nancy and Jean Baudrillard at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he Millis Award for Theses of Exceptional Merit. He is the author of an is also a full-time faculty member. He teaches Philosophy of the anthology of Philippine Literatures, Pasakalye, and co-author with Human Person, Ethics, and Philosophy of Media and Technology. Roland Tolentino in an anthology of Philippine Popular Culture He has published essays in various local and international philo- essays, Espasyo, both published by the Ateneo de Manila University sophical journals and has co-authored textbooks on the Philosophy Press. Gary joins this year the foremost group of film critics in of the Human Person and Ethics. the Philippines, the Manunuri ng mga Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP), which gives the annual film awards called Urian. AGUSTIN MARTIN G. RODRIGUEZ is a professor of philosophy at the Loyola Schools of the Ateneo de Manila University. He DUANE ALLYSON U. GRAVADOR-PANCHO is a full-time writes on ecology, the legacy of colonization and Westernization, Philosophy instructor at the Ateneo de Davao University, where she poverty, and radical democracy. His research has been published also earned her MA in Philosophy. She is currently on study leave, in journals of philosophy, political science, sociology, development pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila University. studies, economics, and Philippine studies. He has written books Her contribution to the present anthology is a revised version of on governance, ecology, and just development. He has consulted her paper for the course Philosophy of the City, under Dr. Remmon for various NGOs and multilateral agencies like the World Bank. Barbaza. Duane’s writing is, and always will be, reflective of her His works argue for the need to recognize the multiplicity of ration- feminist position—one that calls for a return to the lived body as alities to realize just and sustainable development. a site for resisting sexual and gendered injustice. To Duane, giving bodies back to our cities might be one way to begin. FERNANDO NAKPIL-ZIALCITA obtained his BA Humanities and MA Philosophy at the Ateneo de Manila, and subsequently LUKAS KAELIN is assistant professor at the Department for obtained a MA and PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the Practical Philosophy/Ethics at the Catholic Private-University in University of Hawai’i at Honolulu. He is Professor Emeritus at Linz. He studied Philosophy at the Hochschule für Philosophie S.J. in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Ateneo Munich and at the Heythrop College in London and got his doctorate de Manila University where he also heads the Cultural Heritage at the Hochschule für Philosophie with a study on Theodor W. Studies Program. In his writings, he has called attention to the Adorno’s Critical Theory of Society in relation on current questions of uniqueness and beauty of the urban tradition of Luzon and Visayas biotechnology at the beginning of life. He has been visiting professor which fuses together indigenous, Spanish-Mexican, Chinese and at the Ateneo de Manila University (2006–2008) and post-doctoral American traditions. He has also highlighted the importance of research fellow at the University of Vienna (2009-2015). His main public space as constituting the very essence of a true city. He has research interest is the theory of the public sphere in the context worked with private organizations in fighting for a more livable of the current social, economic, political and media transformation. and attractive city-life. Index

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